6:10 AM Today

Something happened this morning.
I woke up thirty minutes before my usual 5 AM. No alarm. Just up. Walked the dog. Did my workout in the living room, TV on. Then I switched to YouTube. Live from Golden Temple, Amritsar.

Around 6:10, the Hukamnama was read out.

In Sikhism, the Hukamnama is the daily reading from Guru Granth Sahib. It’s not a sermon. It’s a message. Personal. Meant for you. But only if you’re listening. Only if something in you is ready.

I wasn’t in any spiritual state. I was catching my breath after push-ups. Body tired. Mind empty. Nothing planned. And the words just landed.

Today’s message had two threads.
The first — scholars exhaust themselves reading scripture and contentment never arrives. Knowledge without inner faith is empty. You can debate your whole life and still miss the point.

The second — bring me companions who show me the way. Whoever points me toward You, I devote myself to that friend. Grace flows in sangha. Not in isolation. Not in books.

Two threads. But maybe they’re the same thread.

I could not forget it. I carried it the whole day without remembering the specifics. Gunge ka gur. The mute person who tastes jaggery. Knows the sweetness fully. Can’t say a word about it. I had the urge to share it, explain it, write about it. But I couldn’t. Not because I didn’t want to. Because there were no words that could hold what I was carrying.

And then i recall, Twenty-odd years ago. Indore and My uncle.

We were a group of people unrelated, not friends, not colleagues, just the ones who met every Thursday night at his place. We showed up around 9 PM. Some others too came to talk about problems, work, life, and the usual. Most left by midnight.

But five or seven of us stayed. And that’s when the real thing started.

Nobody taught anything. Nobody had a plan. People just shared what happened to them. Small things that felt like miracles. Events that made no sense at the time but looking back, everything had fallen exactly where it needed to.

Some spoke about how situations that looked like disasters turned out to be blessings. Some couldn’t explain what happened. They just knew something had shifted.

There was no agenda. No scripture being read. No guru sitting at the front. Just we sitting together and talking about what they couldn’t talk about anywhere else.

Uncle used to say — when people sit together and talk about God, it’s not a crowd. It’s a sangha. And that sangha creates something. An energy field that heals us. Even spirit guides join in. He never called it satsang. But that’s what it was.

I didn’t understand as I was in my twenties. I sat there because I liked the company. But something was getting absorbed without me knowing.

And that’s where the two threads from hukumnama converge.

I wrote about forgetfulness in an earlier post. Called it a blessing. It connects here. Ashtavakra Gita says forget everything. Not learn more. Forget. Knowledge accumulated is ego. One more brick you’re laying around yourself. But when it gets absorbed, dissolved, when it stops being something you carry and becomes something you are — that’s amrita. It doesn’t feed the ego. It kills it.

But maybe that dissolution doesn’t happen alone. Maybe knowledge doesn’t dissolve in solitude. It dissolves in the field. In the sangha (satsang) of people who aren’t trying to be wise but are simply being honest about what they don’t know.

Those Thursday nights in Indore were not spiritual practice. Nobody would have called them that. But they were the space where knowledge stopped being knowledge and started becoming something else.

The Hukamnama isn’t saying stop reading. It was saying the reading has to dissolve. And maybe it dissolves faster when you’re not sitting alone with it. Maybe it needs the field.

I didn’t choose this verse today. In Sikhism, the Hukamnama is opened at random every morning. You get what you get.

But maybe random is just the word we use when we don’t understand the selection.

I was ready this morning. Not because I tried to be. Because I wasn’t trying at all.

The full text of today’s Hukamnama in Gurmukhi is below.

ਅੱਜ ਦਾ ਹੁਕਮਨਾਮਾ — ੨੮ ਅਪ੍ਰੈਲ ੨੦੨੬
ਸਤਿਨਾਮ ਸ੍ਰੀ ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਸਾਹਿਬ ਜੀ।
ਸਲੋਕ ਮਹਲਾ ਤੀਜਾ।
ਪਰਥਾਇ ਸਾਖੀ ਮਹਾਪੁਰਖ ਬੋਲਦੇ ਸਾਂਝੇ ਸਗਲ ਜਹਾਨੈ।
ਗੁਰਮੁਖਿ ਹੋਇ ਸੋ ਭਉ ਕਰੇ ਆਪਣਾ ਆਪ ਪਛਾਣੈ।
ਗੁਰ ਪਰਸਾਦੀ ਜੀਵਤ ਮਰੈ ਤਾ ਮਨ ਹੀ ਤੇ ਮਨ ਮਾਨੈ।
ਜਿਨ ਕਉ ਮਨ ਕੀ ਪਰਤੀਤ ਨਾਹੀ ਨਾਨਕ ਸੇ ਕਿਆ ਕਥਹਿ ਗਿਆਨੈ।
ਮਹਲਾ ਤੀਜਾ।
ਗੁਰਮੁਖਿ ਚਿਤ ਨ ਲਾਇਓ ਅੰਤ ਦੁਖ ਬਹੁਤਾ ਆਇ।
ਅੰਦਰਹੁ ਬਾਹਰਹੁ ਅੰਧਿਆ ਸੁਧ ਨ ਕਾਈ ਪਾਇ।
ਪੰਡਿਤ ਤਿਨ ਕੇ ਬਰਕਤੇ ਸਭ ਜਗਤ ਖਾਇ।
ਜੋ ਰਤੇ ਹਰਿ ਨਾਇ ਜਿਨ ਗੁਰ ਕੈ ਸਬਦਿ ਸਲਾਹਿਆ ਹਰਿ ਸਿਉ ਰਹੇ ਸਮਾਇ।
ਪੰਡਿਤ ਦੂਜੈ ਭਾਇ ਬਰਕਤ ਨ ਹੋਵਈ ਨਾ ਧਨੁ ਪਲੈ ਪਾਇ।
ਪੜਿ ਥਕੇ ਸੰਤੋਖੁ ਨ ਆਇਓ ਅਨਦਿਨ ਜਲਤ ਬਿਹਾਇ।
ਕੂਕ ਪੁਕਾਰ ਨ ਚੁਕਈ ਨਾ ਸੰਸਾ ਵਿਚਹੁ ਜਾਇ।
ਨਾਨਕ ਨਾਮ ਵਿਹੂਣਿਆ ਮੋਹ ਕਾਲੈ ਉਠ ਜਾਇ।
ਪਉੜੀ।
ਹਰਿ ਸਜਣ ਮੇਲ ਪਿਆਰੇ ਮਿਲ ਪੰਥ ਦਸਾਈ।
ਜੋ ਹਰਿ ਦਸੇ ਮਿਤ ਤਿਸੁ ਹਉ ਬਲਿ ਜਾਈ।
ਗੁਣ ਸਾਂਝੀ ਤਿਨ ਸਿਉ ਕਰੇ ਹਰਿ ਨਾਮੁ ਧਿਆਈ।
ਹਰਿ ਸੇਵੀ ਪਿਆਰਾ ਨਿਤ ਸੇਵ ਹਰਿ ਸੁਖੁ ਪਾਈ।
ਬਲਿਹਾਰੀ ਸਤਿਗੁਰ ਤਿਸੁ ਜਿਨ ਸੋਝੀ ਪਾਈ।
ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕਾ ਖਾਲਸਾ ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕੀ ਫਤਿਹਿ।
ਰਾਗ ਸੋਰਠ ਦੀ ਵਾਰ, ਪਉੜੀ ਵਾਰਵੀ, ਸਲੋਕਾਂ ਨਾਲ।