Mullu revisited.

 The opening image is:

“Mullu koneya mele mūru kereya kaṭṭi…”

“On the tip of a thorn, three lakes were built…”

The tip of the thorn signifies something unimaginably minute—the jīva, whose traditional description is often given through the analogy of repeatedly dividing the tip of a horse's hair.

The three lakes are then interpreted as the three coverings/bodies associated with embodied existence:

Sthūla śarīra — gross body

Sūkṣma śarīra — subtle body

Liṅga/Anādi body — causal or beginningless connection with embodiment, in the interpretation you have quoted.

The wonderfully paradoxical statement is that two lakes cannot be filled, while the third is not filled. It immediately turns the riddle from an amusing folk puzzle into a meditation on human life: we have the instrument for spiritual progress, but do not use it completely.

And then the chain continues.

The real beauty is in the transformation

Each stage asks us to look at ordinary objects differently:

Riddle image

Traditional interpretation

3 lakes

3 bodies

3 workers

Childhood, youth, old age

3 buffaloes

Wife, children, wealth

3 heaps of gold

Dharma, Adharma, inheritance/future

3 observers

Sanchita, Prārabdha, Āgāmi karma

3 villages

Sattva, Rajas, Tamas

3 potters

Rudra, Brahma, Vishnu

3 pots

Viveka, Vairāgya, Bhakti

3 rice grains

Sāttvika, Rājasika, Tāmasika bhakti

3 relatives

Mind, speech, body/action

3 rods

Past, present, future suffering

Final prayer

Grace leading to Sadgati/Moksha

What makes it especially powerful is that nothing is wasted. The answer to one riddle creates the next question.

For example:

The unused lake → the three workers → the useless stages of life → the three buffaloes → the three desires → wealth → karma → the three guṇas → the three potters → the three means of spiritual progress → bhakti → mind, speech and action → suffering → moksha.

So it is actually a spiritual map of human life.

The progression itself is extraordinarily clever:

thorn-tip → three lakes → three diggers → three buffaloes → three heaps of gold → three observers → three villages → three potters → three pots → three grains of rice → three relatives → three rods → Moksha.

And the striking feature is that each answer becomes the starting point for the next riddle.

The central idea.