Kirtan Sohila — The Song of the Night

Every night before sleep, Sikhs sing one short prayer: Kirtan Sohila, five songs by three Gurus — and the same prayer is sung at the cremation ground. Why is the bedtime song and the funeral song one song? For a hundred years, the great kathakars — the storytellers and scholars of the Guru's word — answered that question in Punjabi, to sangats who came by the thousands. Almost none of it has ever reached English. This companion gathers ten of those voices, from Sant Gurbachan Singh's 1960s tapes to teachers of today, and weaves what they found — shabad by shabad — into one book: the goatherd whose love put thorns in Guru Nanak's feet, the iron fortress that rises around the singer, the wedding that death turns out to be, the sky that is already an arti platter, and the friend's quiet request that closes every Sikh day.

1. 1 The Song of the Night What Kirtan Sohila is, why a wedding song guards both sleep and death, and the sakhis of how it came to the night — the goatherd, the thorns in Guru Nanak's feet, and the iron fortress. 7 min read ›
2. 2 The House Where the Praise Is Sung Guru Nanak's opening shabad: the house of praise, the Fearless One's song against the root fear, gifts beyond price, and the soul's wedding date already written. 8 min read ›
3. 3 Six Schools, One Sun The world's many paths and teachers, the six cooks and one hunger, and the sun that never actually sets — Guru Nanak's answer to every religious quarrel. 6 min read ›
4. 4 The Sky Is the Platter The Arti at Jagannath Puri: the cosmos as a ceremony already in progress, the unstruck drum, the thousand eyes that are no eye — ending in the rain-bird's thirst for one drop of grace. 7 min read ›
5. 5 The City of Desire Guru Ram Das's shabad: the body as a brimming city, the sword hidden in the sangat, the thorn of ego that deepens with every step — and the mind lowered into the dyer's vat of love. 8 min read ›
6. 6 The Friend's Request Guru Arjan's closing song: the Master who pleads instead of commands, the shrinking span of days, the one errand the soul was sent for — and the dust of the saints' feet. 7 min read ›
7. 7 The Night and the Door The consolidated teaching of ten voices across three generations: sleep and death as one door at two sizes, fear dissolved by praise, death re-named a wedding, and a universe already at worship. 6 min read ›
8. 8 The Voices and the Method Who the ten kathakars are, the fifty-three recordings this book was drawn from, how spoken Punjabi became this English — and our debts, named in full. 6 min read ›