Everything wells up out of the One's deep stillness, and in the end everything settles back into it.
The Arc
This seventeen-verse Solhe is the twin of the 'Arbad Narbad' hymn (B00C2237), telling the same cosmology through the image of 'sunn', the Primal Void. Verse after verse begins 'out of the stillness': air and water, the great powers, the seven seas, sun and moon and earth, night and day, joy and sorrow, the very elements of the body. It teaches the fourth state above the three gunas, the Teacher's ladder that heals the sickness of the separate self, and the seeds we plant by our deeds. It closes by returning to the deep stillness it began in, where the pure inner music sounds.
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 B00C2237, 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 B00C2236: 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 presented as a deep, living stillness, not emptiness, so children meet it as wonder rather than void.
Pauri 3: not returning to the womb of rebirth is softened to 'coming home, never lost in endless wandering again'.
Pauri 10: the ache of 'birth and death' is softened to the ache of 'coming and going'; haumai is defined on first appearance; the fourth state is named as freedom.
Pauri 11: the many beings (dev/daanav/gan/gandharab) are rendered as bright and shadowy ones and heavenly messengers and singers, without demonizing.
Pauri 13: good and bad 'written on the forehead' is reframed as seeds we sow by our deeds, keeping the emphasis on agency and choice.
Pauri 15: 'the greedy man acts falsely' is turned into gentle self-address rather than condemnation.
Pauri 8: the four Vedas and the three gunas are named respectfully. Hukam and cosmology rendered with wonder throughout.
Everything wells up out of the One's deep stillness, and in the end everything settles back into it.
The Arc
This seventeen-verse Solhe is the twin of the 'Arbad Narbad' hymn (B00C2237), telling the same cosmology through the image of 'sunn', the Primal Void. Verse after verse begins 'out of the stillness': air and water, the great powers, the seven seas, sun and moon and earth, night and day, joy and sorrow, the very elements of the body. It teaches the fourth state above the three gunas, the Teacher's ladder that heals the sickness of the separate self, and the seeds we plant by our deeds. It closes by returning to the deep stillness it began in, where the pure inner music sounds.
Key Vocabulary
Themes and Cross-Connections
Read alongside B00C2237, 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 B00C2236: 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