Everything wells up out of the One's deep stillness, and in the end everything settles back into it.
The Arc
Picture the deepest quiet you have ever felt. Everything began in a stillness like that. Out of it the One brought air and water, the seven seas, the sun, the moon and the earth. Night and day came from it. So did happy times and hard times. Your body grew from it too, five elements joined together. Your mind loves shiny things. The Guru offers a ladder up, one step at a time. Each kind deed is a seed you plant. At the top waits the same stillness where it all began, full of quiet music. At the centre, the opening line: in the deep stillness, the endless One gathered its power.
Key Vocabulary
Sunn: the Primal Void, a deep, pregnant stillness, not mere emptiness.
Sunn samaadhi: the primal trance of absorption.
Chautha pad: the fourth state, above the three gunas.
Haumai: the feeling of being a separate self (defined at Pauri 10).
Nirmal naad: the pure unstruck inner music.
Themes and Cross-Connections
Read alongside Shabad 96, this hymn completes Guru Nanak's cosmology: the 'Arbad Narbad' poem shows what was not yet, and this one shows how everything wells up from and returns to the Void. The circle from stillness to stillness mirrors the wave-and-ocean image of Shabad 95: we rise from the One and settle back into it.
For Raag Maaroo
In the raag of endings, the picture of all things rising from and returning to one deep stillness turns dissolution into homecoming: the place we end is the place we began, the One's own peaceful home.
Translation Notes
'Sunn' is a deep, living stillness, full of wonder, the source of everything.
Pauri 3: whoever bathes in the pool of truth is not cast into the womb again; they come home.
Pauri 10: the three gunas bring the ache of coming and going; 'chautha pad', the fourth state, is freedom.
Pauri 11: 'dev daanav gan gandharab' are bright and shadowy ones, heavenly messengers and singers.
Pauri 13: good and bad 'written on the forehead' are the seeds of vice and virtue that our deeds sow.
Pauri 8: the four Vedas sing of the three gunas, and none can tell the One's worth.
Hukumnama
Subject: Everything comes from the One's stillness Preview: air and water, seven seas, sun and moon, night and day, a ladder, a seed, and a quiet inner music.
Today: Picture the deepest quiet you have ever felt. Everything began in a stillness like that. Out of it the One brought air and water, the seven seas, the sun, the moon and the earth. Night and day came from it. So did happy times and hard times. Your body grew from it too, five elements joined together. Your mind loves shiny things. The Guru offers a ladder up, one step at a time. Each kind deed is a seed you plant. At the top waits the same stillness where it all began, full of quiet music.
Everything comes from the One's stillness and returns to it.
For today: Sit in silence for two minutes and listen for the stillness everything comes from.
Everything wells up out of the One's deep stillness, and in the end everything settles back into it.
The Arc
Picture the deepest quiet you have ever felt. Everything began in a stillness like that. Out of it the One brought air and water, the seven seas, the sun, the moon and the earth. Night and day came from it. So did happy times and hard times. Your body grew from it too, five elements joined together. Your mind loves shiny things. The Guru offers a ladder up, one step at a time. Each kind deed is a seed you plant. At the top waits the same stillness where it all began, full of quiet music. At the centre, the opening line: in the deep stillness, the endless One gathered its power.
Key Vocabulary
Themes and Cross-Connections
Read alongside Shabad 96, this hymn completes Guru Nanak's cosmology: the 'Arbad Narbad' poem shows what was not yet, and this one shows how everything wells up from and returns to the Void. The circle from stillness to stillness mirrors the wave-and-ocean image of Shabad 95: we rise from the One and settle back into it.
For Raag Maaroo
In the raag of endings, the picture of all things rising from and returning to one deep stillness turns dissolution into homecoming: the place we end is the place we began, the One's own peaceful home.
Translation Notes
Hukumnama
Subject: Everything comes from the One's stillness Preview: air and water, seven seas, sun and moon, night and day, a ladder, a seed, and a quiet inner music.
Today: Picture the deepest quiet you have ever felt. Everything began in a stillness like that. Out of it the One brought air and water, the seven seas, the sun, the moon and the earth. Night and day came from it. So did happy times and hard times. Your body grew from it too, five elements joined together. Your mind loves shiny things. The Guru offers a ladder up, one step at a time. Each kind deed is a seed you plant. At the top waits the same stillness where it all began, full of quiet music.
Everything comes from the One's stillness and returns to it.
For today: Sit in silence for two minutes and listen for the stillness everything comes from.