Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
The day of my wedding is already written — the time when this soul will merge back into the oneness.
Come, my friends — pour the sacred oil over the threshold. Give me your blessings, that I may merge with my Lord.
This shabad uses the Punjabi wedding ceremony as a metaphor for the soul's union with the oneness. In the tradition, the wedding day is the most auspicious and long-awaited day — the day two lives become one.
Guru Nanak uses this for the moment of liberation: the day the separate self dissolves back into the oneness. Not as a frightening ending but as a wedding — the most joyful and anticipated event imaginable. The household that prepares for this with excitement and celebration is the household that understands what life is for.
This shabad is recited at funerals precisely because of this imagery: death is the wedding day, the long-awaited return. The grief is real. And underneath it, the celebration is also real.
How do you think about death — as an ending, or as a return? Has that way of thinking ever shifted for you? What caused it to shift?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI