Like Sunlight Touching Water
How does everything change when nothing stands apart anymore?
How does everything change when nothing stands apart anymore?
Some days, the mind feels like an icy stone in a river. Cold, separate, unyielding even while surrounded by the same water it resists becoming. Then, without warning, a warm ray slips through the canopy: something loosens, and that tight, lonely knot begins to melt. The stubborn stone becomes the flowing river. Where did the line go? What softened what? Perhaps there never was a line at all; only the forgetting of what always was.
Guru Arjan Sahib offers this remembering in Raag Bilaaval in a sabad that sings of union so complete that even the language of difference falls away. It unfolds like a gentle dismantling of the self’s cold edges, line by line, until all that remains is what has always been: One Light, seen, spoken, and lived.
This sabad appears on Ang 846 of the Guru Granth Sahib, and its final stanza brings the heart to a fearless recognition that separation is only a thought, and death itself is just the softest dissolving of that thought. Let’s walk slowly through these last lines, allowing their warmth to meet the stone inside us.
ਸੂਰਜ ਕਿਰਣਿ ਮਿਲੇ ਜਲ ਕਾ ਜਲੁ ਹੂਆ ਰਾਮ ॥
sooraj kiran mile jal kaa jalu hoo-aa raam.
Like sunlight touching water, the water merges back into itself, O Ram.
The Guru begins with an image: water, which seems separate as ice or mist, is always water. When the sun’s rays touch it, its illusion of separateness dissolves. So too with the mind and the Source. The mind’s hardness softens in the warmth of remembrance, becoming what it never stopped being.
ਜੋਤੀ ਜੋਤਿ ਰਲੀ ਸੰਪੂਰਨੁ ਥੀਆ ਰਾਮ ॥
jotee jot ralee sampooranu thee-aa raam.
The individual light blends into the Light and becomes complete, O Ram.
The “light” is the living spark within, the subtle awareness that claims to be “me.” When this merges with the Infinite Light, wholeness is felt. Not achieved, but recognized. The incompleteness was never real; it was the story of a separate self.
ਬ੍ਰਹਮੁ ਦੀਸੈ ਬ੍ਰਹਮੁ ਸੁਣੀਐ ਏਕੁ ਏਕੁ ਵਖਾਣੀਐ ॥
brahamu deesai brahamu sunee-ai eku eku vakhaanee-ai.
Brahm (the Infinite) is seen, Brahm is heard—everywhere, only the One is spoken.
When there is no more edge between the drop and the ocean, everything shows itself as One. One is seen in form, heard in sound, spoken in words. There is no other subject left to speak of.
ਆਤਮ ਪਸਾਰਾ ਕਰਣਹਾਰਾ ਪ੍ਰਭ ਬਿਨਾ ਨਹੀ ਜਾਣੀਐ ॥
aatam pasaaraa karanhaaraa prabh binaa nahee jaanee-ai.
All this expanse is the play of the Soul-Creator—nothing else is known.
The mind, now clear, sees the vast spread of existence as the play of the same Light. There is no separate doer, no other power. All difference appears as waves upon a single ocean.
ਆਪਿ ਕਰਤਾ ਆਪਿ ਭੁਗਤਾ ਆਪਿ ਕਾਰਣੁ ਕੀਆ ॥
aap kartaa aap bhugtaa aap kaaran kee-aa.
The One is the Creator, the Enjoyer, the Cause of all causes.
The roles blur: the One makes, enjoys, and becomes every experience. In the sabad’s gentle certainty, there is no anxiety about control. Everything flows as an unbroken act of Love knowing itself.
ਬਿਨਵੰਤਿ ਨਾਨਕ ਸੇਈ ਜਾਣਹਿ ਜਿਨ੍ਹ੍ਹੀ ਹਰਿ ਰਸੁ ਪੀਆ ॥੪॥੨॥
binvant naanak sayee jaaneh jinHee har ras pee-aa. (4)(2)
Nanak says: only those know this, who have tasted the Essence of Hari. (4)(2)
This final seal holds the quiet humility of direct taste. It cannot be forced or explained; it is drunk like sweet water after thirst. Those who have tasted it live it. They see no second, they speak of no second.
Guru Arjan Sahib, the compiler of the first recension of the Guru Granth Sahib and the fifth luminous embodiment of the Guru-Wisdom, lived and gave his life anchored in this very oneness. His legacy is a river of sabads that flow through every seeker’s heart today in songs of union, sweetness amidst suffering, and trust in the One amid worldly flames. He taught with a calm certainty that even fire cannot burn the truth of this Light within.
This last stanza dissolves the difference between stone and river, sunlight and water, seeker and Wisdom. It does not instruct but invites: to be warmed by that sunlight, to allow the hard knots to melt, to see that there was no true edge between the self and the Light.
There is a gentle truth here, too, about death. Not as something dark or final, but as the same soft melting this sabad celebrates. The drop returns to the ocean not by force, but by a natural warmth. What is called dying is only the last loosening of the idea that the drop was ever alone. The light goes back to Light; the water finds water again. There is no departure, only remembering. So it is very appropriate to hear this sabad recited during the post-funeral bhog of a loved one.
Read this way, the sabad does not long for an escape from life, nor fear its end. It invites a way of living so wholly merged that when the last breath comes, it is not a tearing away but a gentle completion of what has always been true: there is nowhere to go but deeper into what already is.
So in this everyday life, this sabad can be a remembering: when the mind grows rigid with fear - of loss, of change, of dying - pause. Let the warmth of this Wisdom touch it. Watch how fear softens in the sunlight of Oneness. In this quiet warmth, the drop recalls it has always been the ocean.
May the taste of this oneness, free even from the fear of death, find its way into every breath today. Like sunlight that does not ask permission before touching the waiting stone.
Listen to this sabad recited by Bibi Ravinder Kaur
Bhai Ravinder Singh
Bhai Karnail Singh