Meditation on the Name

Three mornings in the river

As a young man at Sultanpur, Nanak waded each dawn into the river Bein to bathe and remember God. One morning he slipped beneath the water and did not surface; for three days all believed him drowned. He rose radiant, and the first words on his lips became the seed of Japji — Ik Onkar, there is but One. He had not been lost in the river; he had been found.

Naming the nameless

A seeker once asked his teacher for the true name of God. The teacher began to speak — and could not stop: merciful, formless, fearless, deathless, the giver, the destroyer, the unseen, the ever-present. By dusk the names had become a thousand and still were not finished. “You see,” the teacher smiled, “the One is larger than any single name. So we sing them all, and bow to what lies beyond them.”

The wedding song of the soul

“Sohila” means a song of joy, the kind sung at a wedding. The Gurus gave the name to the prayer said last thing at night — for sleep, they taught, is a small rehearsal of the soul's final homegoing, and that meeting is not to be feared but welcomed like a bride going to her Beloved. So we close the day not with dread of the dark, but with a song.

Medicine for the mind

A man tormented by worry went from healer to healer and found no rest. A quiet woman gave him no potion, only a page to read each morning. “There is no herb for a restless mind,” she told him, “only remembrance. Sit with these words at dawn, and let the Name do slowly what no medicine can do at once.” In time the storms in him grew still.