Harmandir Sahib, Amritsar · Bernard Gagnon · CC BY-SA 4.0

Sikhism

Tradition·Founded 1499 CE·est. ~26 million worldwide

Sikhism → 1 branch

Branch
Scripture of Sikhism

Sukhmani Sahib.

Guru Arjan's long poem on the settled mind, and the bani a Punjabi family reaches for when someone is ill or has died. Recitation groups of women reading it together are one of the most common forms of Sikh domestic religion.

LanguagePunjabi in Gurmukhi
ComposedGuru Arjan, around 1602
What it holdsTwenty-four ashtpadis on the peace of the mind — the most read single bani after Japji
How it is usedRead at home in illness and bereavement; a full recitation takes about ninety minutes
Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held

Sukhmani is the bani of Punjabi domestic religion. Guru Arjan wrote it in twenty-four sections of eight stanzas each, on the theme of the mind at peace, and it is what a family recites when someone is dying, when someone is ill, when a house is being moved into, or on a fixed weekly evening. Groups of women reading it together — sometimes as a rotating sangat that moves house to house — are one of the most common and least documented forms of Sikh practice, and they operate entirely without clergy. It is also the bani most often heard on Punjabi radio and in taxis. Sikh preachers occasionally complain that it is treated as a charm rather than a text, which is roughly the complaint Nanak made about other people's scriptures, and the complaint has not changed the practice.

The same ground, other faiths

claims that share this one's ideas
Japa — the name, repeated. Hinduism · rite Go deeper →
Kavanah — being inside the words. Judaism · the interior Go deeper →
A Agni — the fire that carries. Vedic Religion · figure Meet them →
The daily sit. Buddhism · rite Go deeper →
The Namokar mantra. Jainism · rite Go deeper →
The Lord's Prayer. Christianity · rite Go deeper →

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