Sukhmani Sahib

Sukhmani means the jewel of peace. It is a quiet mind that nothing can shake. Guru Arjan, the fifth Guru, wrote it, and it is the longest song any Guru wrote. Families read it at home, often when someone needs comfort or care. It comes in twenty-four parts, and only the very last one explains its name. So the name is a promise at the start and an answer at the end. And here is what it is really about. Peace comes from the Naam living in your mind, not from your day going well.

Sukhmani Sahib — "the Jewel of Peace" or "Peace of Mind" — is Guru Arjan's masterwork and the largest single composition by any Guru in Raag Gauree: 24 sections, each consisting of a Salok (couplet) followed by an Ashtapadee of eight pauris, framed by an opening salok that the text itself instructs be read "at the beginning, and at the end." Tradition commonly associates Sukhmani with Ramsar at Amritsar around 1602–1603. It has since become widely used in Sikh devotional practice, including in times of daily reflection and care — because its subject is exactly what its title names: the peace of a mind in which the Name has come to live.