This passage reads less like a checklist of divine qualities and more like a shift in how we’re meant to see. Guru Gobind Singh begins by loosening the familiar idea that God sits somewhere “over there,” a fixed point or a remote authority. Chattr chakr vartee points to a presence moving through every direction and every circle of existence—political, cosmic, psychological. And chattr chakr bhugatai takes it further: the One doesn’t just rule the circles of life from above; the One lives inside them, holds them, even “tastes” them. In this vision, power shows up as closeness.

The next lines widen that closeness into something almost metaphysical. Suyambhav names a reality that arises from itself—self-existent, self-illumined. Yet that kind of sovereignty doesn’t create distance. Sarabadaa sarab jugatai says this same self-existent One is present in all and threaded through all, the inner way things connect. God becomes the unseen coherence of life, the quiet intelligence that makes relationship possible.

Then the poem turns toward lived experience, especially the hard seasons. Dukaalam pranaasee isn’t only about famine or historical crisis. It also names the inner drought: fear, despair, the time when the mind collapses and meaning dries up. The line praises the One as the end of that season, the breaker of the spell. Immediately after, dayaalam saroopai brings tenderness into focus. Compassion isn’t an afterthought here. Mercy has presence. It takes shape. It enters the world in a recognizable form.

The final pair of lines lands the poem’s central tension in a way that feels deeply human. Sadaa ang sangai says the Divine stays close—limb with limb, breath with breath. That intimacy could sound fragile, as if closeness depends on conditions. Abhangang bibhute corrects that. This presence doesn’t crack under pressure. Even when everything burns down to ash, something remains—bibhuti, sacred residue, power that survives change.

Taken together, the passage offers a theology that refuses easy categories. God fills the world without getting diluted by it. God stays close without becoming breakable. God ends the drought and also arrives as compassion you can feel. Guru Gobind Singh gives us a vision where closeness carries authority, relationship carries eternity, and even ash holds a faint, stubborn light.

Meditating Upon Mauli Dharti  

The Music and Artwork

There are some voices that do not fade with time. They change color. Aalam-e-Raushan is a new album of five shabads that listens for those colors. Here is where you can stream the album: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/shivpreetsingh/aalam-e-raushan

The album celebrates the voice of Guru Gobind Singh's voice through his and Bhai Nandlal's words. Two of the compositions are brand new, and three are expansions or completely new versions of my older compositions. The album converses in the languages of the 10th guru: braj bhasha, punjabi, and farsi. 

Rather than treating Guru Gobind Singh as a distant historical figure, this album approaches him as living radiance: a light that instructs, unsettles, consoles, and awakens. In his own words - Sada Ang Sange Abhangam Bibhoote - you are always with me, indivisible from the the ash which comes from your holy fire. 

Each shabad in this collection reveals a different shade of Guru Gobind Singh's light—meditative stillness, ecstatic love, poetic praise, musical wonder, and practical wisdom for living fully awake in the world.

The Shabads & Their Light

Happy Diwali, folks! I’m thrilled to share that my poem “Moondrunk on Diwali” is up at Rattle today—my first published poem.

Huge thanks to Tim Green, Rattle’s editor, for the care he brings to the magazine and the countless hours he gives to poetry. Editing is tough, generous work—making space for others to shine—and from everything I’ve seen these past months, Tim does it in service of poetry.

If you’re new to Rattle: it’s a reader-friendly poetry journal with a subscription base of around 12,000, they read 250,000 poems and publish 300 every year, and their mission is—to promote the practice of poetry. Learn more about Rattle and while you’re visiting, here are three recent poems I loved:

• "Weathering the Storm" - Colleen Farrelly — a science poem, that becomes personal.

• “Vacating” by Michael Brosnan — a thoughtful inventory of work, art, and what we keep.

• “Empathy” by Chelsea McClellan — a devastating and moving poem about pain.

I’ve been learning my way through contemporary poetry for about a decade, but only started submitting to journals last month (mid-September). Four more poems are slated to appear in other magazines soon (The Woolf, Santa Clara Review, UNHOUSED anthology by Prolific Press, Neon & Smoke) —more on that when they land. 

I guess am having some beginner's luck. But its not all luck.  I wanted to thank to a few friends & contemporary poetry teachers who shaped my work: Robert Hass (initial direction in 2008), the late Tony Hoagland (encouragement and generosity to use his poems on my blog), Billy Collins (his poems, his masterclass, his advice on flow, titles, and wonder), Kristen Mears (for editing some of my poetry over the past 2 years), Jane Hirshfield (for her essays, poetry readings and receptivity), Hannah Yerrington (to firm my believe in the poetry of joy/praise), Tess Taylor (for her poetry submissions class), Maggie Queeney (for her form/repetition classes at the Poetry Foundation -- this poem came from an assignment in her class), Maya Popa (for her class on how to review poems).  Also to the Seekers and Seers group who get to bear some of the raw poems I am writing, and still encourage me.