The poem begins with a Sufi dancer—spinning, sacred, almost cosmic. The kind of image we like to associate with devotion. A body becoming a circle, a human turning into something beyond himself. But then the dance ends.
The guy unexpectedly steps outside, lights a cigarette, scrolls on his phone, earbuds in, wearing knockoffs—completely ordinary. He’s even listening to Katy Perry. Which made me smile. I guess in the reverent it may feel like a a small disappointment, as if the sacred has slipped.
By the end of the poem, we are finding everyone—even an accountant—“for the love of Allah.”
Maybe the point isn’t that the sacred disappeared. Maybe it’s that we were expecting it to look a certain way: clean, elevated, separate.
Which brings me to what I have been meditating on this week. Maya. This is maya—the illusion that the divine lives only in the perfect moment, the perfect person, the perfect posture. Guru Amardas says, “maya viche paya” — what is beyond illusion is found within it. The love of God is discovered through the love of His gifts, welcome and unwelcome.
Those who are praying are human too. They are not finished beings. They are not pure symbols. They are people—smoking, scrolling, stumbling, singing pop songs—still trying to find Allah in the noise, in the mess, in the middle of their lives.
And maybe that is the prayer. To find what is beyond counting in the counting. To glimpse the infinite even in an accountant. To realize that nothing has fallen away— only our idea of what the sacred should look like. And once that illusion loosens, everything begins again “for the love of Allah.”
First Guru Amardas' shabad that has the most elegant definition of Maya in my view. It comes from Anand Sahib (Pauri 29). Maya is anything that takes us away from our true essence. Following my interpretation, I am sharing the poems I have written that are inspired by this shabad.
Finding Joy in a Burning World
In a world that often feels like it is burning—consumed by conflict, ambition, illness, and endless wanting—the search for peace can feel like a search for an exit. We imagine that somewhere there must be a cool, quiet place far away from the heat of life. Escape is not possible. And escape is not needed. Joy comes from remembering what the fire is for. I have been thinking of this as I reflect on the following words from Guru Amardas (29th of 40 verses in his Verses of Joy):
Eh māyā
This is Maaya,
jit har visrai
by which Hari is forgotten …
moh upjai
by which greed arises …
bhāo dūjā lāyā
by which duality attaches.
Jaisee agan udar meh taisee bāhar māyā
As is the fire within the womb, so is Maya outside
Māiā agan sabh iko jehee kartai khel rachāyā
The fire of Maya is one and the same the Creator has staged this play
Jā tis bhāṇā tā jamiā parvār bhalā bhāyā
Divine order results in birth and the family is very pleased.
Liv chhuṛkee lagee trisnā māiā amar vartāyā
Love wears off, attachments trap Maya runs limitless
Kahai Nānak gur parsādī jinā liv lāgee tinee viche māyā pāyā
By Guru's Grace, those who are enrapt in love find Hari within Maya
Eh māyā jit har visrai moh upjai bhāo dūjā lāyā
Kahai Nānak gur parsādī jinā liv lāgee tinee viche māyā pāyā
The Shabad begins with a diagnosis of the human condition. Maya—the world of appearances, desires, relationships, ambitions—is the place where the Divine is often forgotten. When remembrance fades, attachment arises and a feeling of separation takes root. But then the Guru introduces a startling image. Maya is compared to fire.
Jaisee agan udar meh taisee bāhar māyā.
The fire outside is the same as the fire within the womb.
This line changes everything. The heat of the womb cooks the body of the unborn child. Without that warmth, nothing forms. Life itself depends on that quiet fire. The Guru is suggesting that the same energy that gives life in the womb also fuels the world outside: desire, creativity, ambition, longing, love. The fire itself is not the enemy.
The problem is forgetfulness. When the Divine is forgotten, the fire becomes destructive. Attachment hardens. Craving multiplies. Duality spreads. But the Guru insists that the Creator has staged this entire play with one fire. The same energy that binds us can also awaken us. This is why the Shabad does not call us to escape the world. Instead, it invites us to discover the Divine within Maya itself.
And this insight finds a remarkable echo in a contemporary poem by Katie Farris, written centuries later but addressing the same burning world.
Why Write Love Poetry in a Burning World
- Katie Farris
To train myself to find, in the midst of hell
what isn't hell.
The body, bald, cancerous, but still
beautiful enough to
imagine living the body
washing the body
replacing a loose front
porch step the body chewing
what it takes to keep a body
going—
This scene has a tune
a language I can read a door
I cannot close I stand
within its wedge
a shield.
Why write love poetry in a burning world?
To train myself, in the midst of a burning world
to offer poems of love to a burning world.
Farris's poem begins with a simple but difficult practice: to train myself to find, in the midst of hell, what isn't hell. She does not deny suffering. The body in her poem is bald from cancer. The world is burning. The pain is real. But even within that burning world she searches for what remains alive—small acts of care, attention, and tenderness. Washing a body. Replacing a porch step. Chewing food slowly enough to continue living. The poem suggests that love is not an escape from the burning world. Love is a discipline practiced inside it.
In that sense, Farris's poem is another way of standing inside the fire without forgetting what it is for. She is not looking for a way out. She is looking for what is still sacred within the flames. This is the same orientation the Guru points toward. The final lines of the Shabad reveal the transformation that makes joy possible: jinā liv lāgee tinee viche māyā pāyā. Those whose consciousness is absorbed in love find the Divine within Maya itself.
The fire does not disappear. The world continues with all its heat—its ambitions, fears, griefs, and desires. But something fundamental changes in the way we stand within it. The same flame that burns a house down can bake bread. The same Maya that traps the mind in craving becomes, when remembrance awakens, the place where the Divine is discovered.
This is why saints sing and poets write love poems even when the world burns. They are practicing remembrance. They are training themselves to notice what is still alive in the fire. Peace, then, is not a cool oasis somewhere outside the flames. It is a change of orientation within the heat of life. It is what happens when love learns how to stand inside the fire without being consumed by it. The world may burn. But the fire was never meant only to destroy. Sometimes it is there to bake the bread of joy.
In a world that often feels like it is burning—consumed by conflict, ambition, illness, and endless wanting—the search for peace can feel like a search for an exit. We imagine that somewhere there must be a cool, quiet place far away from the heat of life. Escape is not possible. And escape is not needed. Joy comes from remembering what the fire is for. I have been thinking of this as I reflect on the following words from Guru Amardas (29th of 40 verses in his Verses of Joy).
This is why saints sing and poets write love poems even when the world burns. They are practicing remembrance. They are training themselves to notice what is still alive in the fire. Peace, then, is not a cool oasis somewhere outside the flames. It is a change of orientation within the heat of life. It is what happens when love learns how to stand inside the fire without being consumed by it. The world may burn. But the fire was never meant only to destroy. Sometimes it is there to bake the bread of joy.
The Story of the Wrong Petal
Once I played a wrong note
in Raag Ramkali—
the raag that sprouts
love of wholeness.
One finger slipped,
a small rebellion on the string,
and I could hear sirens
of the raag-police.
Yet the note kept opening—
like a heart
breaking into bloom.
For a moment I wondered:
how could this be any different
from Anandkali—joy itself, sprouting?
Afterwards the tanpura
kept breathing
its ancient tale: yes.
Choosing Petals
The fire that burns us within
is not unlike what chars the world.
- Guru Amardas
More dangerous than those
who believe God is seated
on some distant seventh sky,
and perhaps even more fickle
than those who think
He is sitting quietly beside us,
are those who decide
the only place He sits
is on a mitochondrial throne
within us. It begins
with a small preference—
a petal over the flower,
a daisy over a wild spring,
a season over the one sun
that burns without choosing.
Maya, Holding Love’s Hand
This morning I considered your hand in mine
the way one considers weather—
a warmth arriving
that leaves with its pockets full of light.
My chai cooled while I thought about
the thousand songs of forever,
of two people holding on.
Then an ancient bard cleared his throat
from somewhere behind the Bhagavad Gita
hummed a single note:
love ends but never maya.
Outside, a couple passed, hand in hand,
while the wind turned one leaf into two.
Magic of Maya
Once I saw a magician
stretch one red ribbon
and suddenly there are two.
Today I watched a baby lizard
slide out of its parent
in an Instagram video,
landing on a thin branch
as if the tree itself
had just invented it.
What could be
more magical
than birth?
Especially one followed by no school,
no rehearsal, just climbing
already without eyes.
The ancient bard claims
Maya makes two out of one.
And what about death?
Death, that lizard still clinging
to the branch long after the tree
has turned back into earth.
Even more
magical
than birth.
The First Separation
The first thing that happens to us
is eviction.
Someone lifts us into the light,
cuts our cord to our origin,
and suddenly the world has edges—
your body here,
your mother — somewhere else
already being called someone other.
Eh Maya!
And from that moment on
everyone encourages the distance.
They give us mirrors,
names,
opinions about what belongs to us.
The world becomes a long lesson
in the word mine.
My shoes.
My thoughts.
My problems.
Maya!
By the time we grow up
we are excellent at being separate—
little islands with excellent Wi-Fi.
The ancient bard once
appeared in the name
of ever-serving and
sang the song of anand,
the song of joy!
Right here,
inside this very body
made of dust and grocery lists
and the occasional headache,
there is a door
that does not lead outward.
Eh Maya!
It opens inward.
And when the throat loosens—
just a little—
a song slips through
and suddenly
the walls between things
forget their jobs.
The body remembers the ocean
it was briefly separated from,
and for a few minutes
while the note is traveling,
mother, child, world, breath—
everything
is singing the same line.
Eh Maya
I have come to see the phrase Ghar Ghar Baba—from the writings of Bhai Gurdas—as remarkably expansive. On the surface, it simply means “Baba in every house.” But both Ghar (house) and Baba open into far richer territory.
The word ghar has always carried a deeper resonance. A house is not just a structure; it is a dwelling, a chamber, a place where something lives. If we follow this idea inward, the human body itself becomes a city of houses—trillions of cells, each a small room pulsing with life. And here, modern science offers an astonishing insight: these cells remember. Here is the article I was reading today: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a70578341/memory-cells-consciousness/ - Your Cells Can ‘Remember’—Meaning Your Entire Body Could Be Conscious, Some Researchers Suggest,
Research now shows that memory is not confined to the brain. Throughout the body, cells store traces of past experiences through changes in gene activity—a phenomenon known as epigenetic memory. Immune cells, for instance, “remember” previous pathogens, enabling faster responses to future threats. Memory, it turns out, is not centralized. It is distributed. The body itself is a field of remembering.
Seen through this lens, Ghar Ghar Baba becomes more than a spiritual ideal—it becomes a biological truth. Wisdom is not seated only in the mind. It is woven into every living unit of the body. Each cell carries the story of what has come before: its lineage, its adaptations, its encounters with the world.
Bhai Nandlal captures this beautifully:
“Bas buzurgi hast andar yaad-e oo.” Greatness lies in remembering.
But here, memory is more than recollection. It is continuity. A cell remembers how to remain a skin cell rather than becoming something else. A body remembers how to heal. A culture remembers how to sing. And the human spirit remembers the presence that the saints call Baba.
So Ghar Ghar Baba can be heard anew: in every house of the body, in every cell of life, there is a remembrance. Wisdom is memory awakened. And when memory deepens, identity clarifies. When identity clarifies, service becomes natural.
The ancient bards understood this intuitively, long before molecular biology began to explain it: greatness is not something we accumulate. It is something we remember. And remembrance is already alive—in every house of the body.
Ghar Ghar Baba — the album is out now. These five shabads are available on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Music:
Tera Daasan Daasa
Eh Maaya
Ghar Ghar Baba
Mittar Pyare Nu (feat. Suhail Yusuf Khan)
Yaad-e-oo
The phrase Ghar Ghar Baba comes from Bhai Gurdas’s shabad in praise of Guru Nanak. Literally, it means “Baba in every home.” But ghar is not just a physical structure—it is a doorway to something deeper. A house can be a shelter, yes, but it can also be the ribcage that holds each breath, a memory passed down through generations, a fleeting moment, even a planet or a universe. In this way, every breath becomes a home, every heart a dwelling place, every cell a quiet chamber of presence. And Baba may be the Guru, Guru Nanak, wisdom itself, or simply—love.
This album is a humble attempt to listen for that presence—the quiet, abiding wisdom that moves through every doorway of life. If we listen closely, perhaps we begin to hear what the old singers were pointing toward: that the world itself is one vast home, and the song of the Guru is already echoing in every house.
I have been thinking of greatness these days and this morning I remembered a shlok by Guru Nanak which I used to often hear from my grandmother, and the more I have meditated upon it the more I have come to realize who it is a masterclass in spiritual poetry. It uses vivid natural imagery and incisive social observation to guide the seeker towards a fundamental truth. This particular composition, found on Ang 1412 of the Guru Granth Sahib, is not a single, linear argument but a diptych: two panels that, when viewed together, reveal a complete picture of spiritual integrity. The first panel uses the metaphor of the grand but useless silk-cotton tree to establish a principle of inner value. The second panel moves to the human realm, dissecting the nature of true humility versus its empty, performative shadow. Together, they form a powerful discourse on the essence of virtue, which the Guru identifies not in outward show, but in the sweet, lowly, and pure state of the heart. Here is the verse:
ਸਿੰਮਲ ਰੁਖੁ ਸਰਾਇਰਾ ਅਤਿ ਦੀਰਘ ਅਤਿ ਮੁਚੁ ॥
simmal rukh saraira at deeragh at much
The silk-cotton tree stands tall — very tall, very wide.
ਓਇ ਜਿ ਆਵਹਿ ਆਸ ਕਰਿ ਜਾਹਿ ਨਿਰਾਸੇ ਕਿਤੁ ॥
oi je aaveh aas kar jaye niraase kit
Those who come with hope leave disappointed.
ਫਲ ਫਿਕੇ ਫੁਲ ਬਕਬਕੇ ਕੰਮਿ ਨ ਆਵਹਿ ਪਤ ॥
fal fike ful bakabake kam na aaveh pat
Its fruit is tasteless, its flowers showy, its leaves of no use.
ਮਿਠਤੁ ਨੀਵੀ ਨਾਨਕਾ ਗੁਣ ਚੰਗਿਆਈਆ ਤਤੁ ॥
mithat neevi naanka gun changyaiyan tat
Sweetness and humility, Nanak — these are the essence of virtue.
ਸਭੁ ਕੋ ਨਿਵੈ ਆਪ ਕਉ ਪਰ ਕਉ ਨਿਵੈ ਨ ਕੋਇ ॥
sabh ko nivai aap kau par kau nivai na koye
Everyone bows for themselves. Few bow for another.
ਧਰਿ ਤਾਰਾਜੂ ਤੋਲੀਐ ਨਿਵੈ ਸੁ ਗਉਰਾ ਹੋਇ ॥
dhar taraajoo toliyai nivai su gauraa hoye
Place it on the scale — what lowers is weighty.
ਅਪਰਾਧੀ ਦੂਣਾ ਨਿਵੈ ਜੋ ਹੰਤਾ ਮਿਰਗਾਹਿ ॥
aparaadhee doonaa nivai jo ha(n)taa miragaeh
The guilty bow twice — like a hunter in the forest.
ਸੀਸਿ ਨਿਵਾਇਐ ਕਿਆ ਥੀਐ ਜਾ ਰਿਦੈ ਕੁਸੁਧੇ ਜਾਹਿ ॥੧॥
sees nivaiaai kiaa theeaai jaa ridhai kusudhe jaeh
What happens by lowering the head if the heart remains impure?
The opening image is striking and immediate: "The silk-cotton tree stands tall — very tall, very wide." The Guru paints a picture of immense physical grandeur. The simmal (silk-cotton tree) is a botanical marvel, towering over its surroundings, its thick trunk and sprawling branches promising shade and sustenance. It is, by all external measures, a success. Yet, this promise is a profound deception. Guru Nanak immediately subverts the image of majesty: "Those who come with hope / leave disappointed." The tree is a monument to futility. Its fruit is tasteless, offering no nourishment; its flowers are showy but lack fragrance or substance; its leaves are coarse and useless. Every part of this magnificent structure is, upon closer inspection, hollow. The tree is all form and no function, all appearance and no reality. It exists only for itself, taking up space and offering nothing of value to the world. This is a powerful allegory for a life lived solely on the surface—a life of status, wealth, and physical prowess that, devoid of inner goodness, ultimately leaves both the self and others unfulfilled.
From this negative example, the Guru distills a positive, counter-intuitive truth in the concluding couplet of the first panel: "Sweetness and humility, Nanak — / these are the essence of virtue." The word for sweetness, miṭhat, implies not just a pleasant taste but a gentle, amiable, and benevolent nature. Nīvī, or humility, is the quality of being low, both in stature and in ego. The contrast with the silk-cotton tree is absolute. The tree's virtue was in its appearance of height; true virtue lies in the "lowness" of humility. The tree's nature was bitter or useless; the virtuous nature is sweet. The Guru redefines the axis of value: spiritual weight is not measured by how high one stands, but by how deeply one can bow.
This redefinition sets the stage for the second panel, which plunges us into the complexities of human behavior. The Guru begins with a blunt observation of social reality: "Everyone bows for themselves. / Few bow for another." Here, "bowing" is a metaphor for service, deference, and sacrifice. Most human action, the Guru observes, is ultimately self-serving. Even acts of apparent kindness are often performed for personal gain, reputation, or a sense of self-satisfaction. This is the bow of the ego, a transaction where the "bow" is simply the price paid for a desired outcome.
Guru Nanak then introduces a profound paradox to redefine what true "weight" or worth is: "Place it on the scale — / what lowers is weighty." In the physical world, a heavier object makes the scale go down. In the spiritual realm, Guru Nanak reverses this law. The being who is genuinely humble, who "lowers" themselves in selfless service and submission to the Divine Will, is the one who is truly substantial, truly valuable. They have the "weight" of spiritual merit.
The Guru then provides two contrasting examples of "lowness" to clarify this paradox. The first is the hunter in the forest. To successfully hunt a deer, the hunter must crouch low, becoming small and inconspicuous. This bowing is born of aparādh, or guilt—the intention to do harm. It is a strategic lowering of the self for a selfish and violent purpose. This bow is heavy with sin, not virtue. The second example is implied in the rhetorical question that ends the salok: "What happens by lowering the head / if the heart remains impure?" This points to the ritualistic bow, the empty gesture of piety performed in temples or before holy men, while the heart remains filled with ego, greed, and malice. This bow is like the silk-cotton tree—impressive in its outward form but utterly hollow at its core. It carries no weight on the spiritual scale.
The hunter and the hypocrite perform the same physical act as the truly humble person—they lower themselves. But their inner state, their intention, is diametrically opposed. The true humility the Guru advocates is not a posture but a condition of the heart. It is a sweetness of being that arises from the eradication of ego, a natural lowness that seeks nothing for itself. It is the essence (tat) of virtue, the reality behind the form.
In this salok, Guru Nanak guides the seeker from a deceptive exterior to a truthful interior. He dismantles our attachment to the grand and the showy, using the silk-cotton tree as a warning against a life of hollow appearance. He then challenges our understanding of human action, forcing us to look beyond the gesture to the intention. The true measure of a person, the Guru declares, is not their height, their show, or even their bowed head, but the purity of their heart. To be truly "weighty," one must be inwardly sweet and genuinely low—a state of being that requires no performance, for it is the very essence of the soul in harmony with the Divine.
And the epitome of harmony with the Divine: considering everything that is happening as sweet. A matra to live by: Meetha Meetha!
Guru Gobind Singh's powerful mantra -
Chattr chakr vartee, Chattr chakr bhugato
Suyambhav Subham Sarabadaa Sarab Jugate
Dukaalam Pranasi, Dayalam Saroope
Sadaa Ang Sange, Abhangang Bibhoote
Pervader of All Directions, Experiencing All That is
Self-arising, Self-luminous, Ever-present, Every Way
Destroyer of Darkness, Compassionate in Form
Forever Within, Indivisible Residual Presence
Chattr Chakr Varti – Reflection (Shivpreet Singh)
You pervade every direction, every circle of existence,
and You are the one who holds it, inhabits it, governs it—
not distant from creation, but fully present within it.
You are self-existent, self-arising, radiant in Your own being,
beautiful and auspicious by nature.
You are present in all, joined to all—
the hidden method, the inner intelligence by which everything coheres.
You are the destroyer of dukaal:
hard time, inner famine, fear, the collapse of meaning.
And You are dayaal—compassion itself,
mercy not abstract, but taking form.
You are always with us—limb with limb, breath with breath.
And yet You are abhang: unbreakable, indivisible, beyond decay.
Your power, bibhuti, remains even as ash—
not an ending, but the residue of truth.
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.
Recording this shabad and teaching this shabad for the kids for the upcoming Basant.
Meditating Upon Mauli Dharti
Bhagat Kabir's Mauli Dharti is about the blossoming of the spiritual seeker. Bhagat Kabir emphasizes the importance of spiritual growth and the pursuit of enlightenment. In Mauli Dharti, one of his poems, he uses the metaphor of a flower to illustrate his point about the potential for recognizing presence, enabling growth and encouraging transformation in all aspects of human life. This poem of the spring time encourages us to be like a flower, blossoming and growing in all our actions, whether we are creating, sustaining, or culminating something.
Refrain: Blossoming of the Inner Soul
Mauli Dharti Mauleya Akaas
Ghat Ghat Mauleya Aatam Pragaas
The earth blossoms, the sky blossoms
Every heart blossoms, when the soul blossoms
When the spiritual seeker is blossoming from within (aatam pragaas), which Guru Nanak calls "the light of the flower" (phoolant jyoti) in his aarti, it’s seems like everything around is blossoming. The earth is blossoming (mauli dharti), the sky is also blossoming (mauleya akaas) and every heart is blossoming (ghat ghat mauleya).
Verses: Blossoming in Every Action
To me, the three verses of the poem correspond to the three potential actions we might be engaged in: creation, sustaining, or culmination, and the three divisions of self: mind, body and soul.
1. Sustainer - Vishnu - Body
Raaja Raam Mauleo Anant Bhaye
Jeh Dekhon Teh Reheya Samaaye
King Raam blossoms many ways
Wherever I see he permeates
The soul like Raaja Raam, is present in all the forms that we are existing in the universe. All its forms that are existing are blossoming:
2. Creator - Brahma - Mind
Dvitiya Moule Chaare Bed
Simriti Mouli Syon Kateb
Second blossom the four vedas
Simrities blossom along with Quran and Bible
3. Transformer - Mahesh - Soul
Shankar Mauleyo Jog Dhyaan
Kabir Ko Swami Sab Samaan
Shankar blossoms through meditation
My master, all the same
Meditating upon the poem invokes the creation, sustaining, and culmination agents within us: our body, mind, and soul. By aligning these aspects of ourselves with the natural growth and transformation that is inherent in the universe, we can become more fully realized and fulfilled human beings. The more we meditate on this poem, the more we realize our true essence, we realize our presence in every entity around us, we find spiritual growth in every scripture that we turn to, and we are eventually transformed to be a flower that does not have an ego and flowers on seeing others flowers blossom. We bloom in every aspect of our lives and can tap into the innate potential for growth and transformation that exists within us, and ultimately reach a state of greater awareness and enlightenment.
The Music and Artwork
I have been meditating on this Bhagat Kabir shabad since November. My daughter Geet learned this shabad from Bhai Tajvinder Singh ji and this composition is derived from that traditional composition. You can find this recording on iTunes, spotify and YouTube music and several other places - just look for “Mauli Dharti.”
Mauli Dharti: Artwork
Thanks to Snizhana Kozakevich (@snizhokartist) for her beautiful art inspired by Bhagat Kabir’s poetry - please support Ukrainian artists if you can. You can ask her for prints and this artwork. You can also contribute to artists like Snizhana who are helping make this a better planet by donating to Dhunanand Foundation to which I donate all proceeds of my music.
What do Flowers Teach Us
Flowers can teach us about oneness through their symbolism of unity, diversity, and interconnectedness. Flowers, despite their differences in color, shape, and fragrance, are all connected in the same ecosystem, relying on pollination and symbiotic relationships with other living beings for their survival. This reflects the idea of oneness in nature, where everything is connected and interdependent. Additionally, the beauty and harmonious arrangement of different flowers in a garden can symbolize the beauty and unity that can be achieved through diversity.
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
1. Raagan Painda — The Path of Raag 2. Jin Prem Kiyo — Love beyond surfaces 3. Aalam-e-Raushan — The World Made Bright 4. Puran Jot Jagai — Lighting the Inner Lamp
5. Chattr Chakra Varti — A Chant for All Directions
Singing oneness!
