Walking Up the Mountain

This audio version is sung by Guru Dass Singh and Krishna Kaur from the album “Ballads of the Khalsa”, which you can find at Sat Nam Versand.

“This is a song that I wrote in those years [after 1984 and the attack on the Akal Takhat].  It is an adaptation to a poem written by Gurudain Singh, which Yogiji asked me to put to music for one of his classes. It tells the tale of the spiritual journey of the student and the Teacher.”  ~ Guru Dass Singh

Lyrics for Walking Up the Mountain

In the Jemez Ponderosa where the pinion meets the sky,
And the hardest granite mountain meets the rain clouds, flying high.
As you and I look out and see the world spread out below,
With different eyes and hearts and all the different things we know.
There are cars down on the highway ten miles to the east,
See the gilt of distant sunlight in the rat tat dancing heat.
But to you, you see their faces and the failing lives they lead.
Then you wink at me and reckon there’s a way I might succeed.

Walking up the mountain,
And I’ve got you by my side.
I’ve got thunder in the valley,
And this bone-dry mountain high.
Walking up the mountain, climbing side by side,
Walking up the mountain, with you.

With you I’m never certain just exactly where I stand.
You scare me when you do the things I just can’t understand.
If I slow down, you tell me that I am moving up to fast.
If I speed up, you tell me slow down kid, you’ll never last.
When I ask you how to live my life, you laugh and ask me why.
You tell me I’d be better off to ask you how to die.
Come with me, we’ll climb up the sandstone to the sky.
Oh Yogi, son of Guru, come see with your own eyes.

Walking up the mountain,
And I’ve got you by my side.
I’ve got thunder in the valley,
And this bone-dry mountain high.
Walking up the mountain, climbing side by side,
Walking up the mountain, with you.

As the rain fell on the mountain, I saw every human life
As the value of a raindrop, falling from the sky.
It don’t matter to the heavens, just who lives and just who dies.
It don’t matter to the rain cloud, when the raindrop falls from the sky.
As the clouds blew off, I saw the stars shining in the night.
In the trillion points of light I saw that each one had a life.
Then if nothing seems to matter, tell me what’s the life to do?
You said the only thing that matters is the memory of you.

Walking up the mountain,
And I’ve got you by my side.
I’ve got thunder in the valley,
And this bone-dry mountain high.
Walking up the mountain, climbing side by side,
Walking up the mountain, with you.

And I felt like I was falling through the channels dark at night,
Saw the in and out was fast and hard as death and life,
Saw the baggage that I carried and the chambers of my mind,
insignificant as rain; a total waste of time.
Well I saw you standing smiling, I cried, ‘What right have you got?’
You said, ‘Listen son of Guru, I’m the best thing you have got’.
I’m the kindness and the comfort and the sorrow and the pain
I’ve got nothing left to lose and nothing left to gain.

Walking up the mountain,
And I’ve got you by my side.
I’ve got thunder in the valley,
And this bone-dry mountain high.
Walking up the mountain, climbing side by side,
Walking up the mountain, with you.

I don’t know where we’re going, won’t you help me find the way?
You say it doesn’t matter, cause we don’t know anyway.
We’ll walk back down the mountain, there beneath the setting sun
See the time of evolution, as only just begun.
We’ve got thunder on the mountain and the sunlight on the plains.
We’re always moving forward, never pass this way again.
With a smile and with a wink, you turn and walk away.
Oh Yogi, son of Guru, there’s still a chance, you say.

Walking up the mountain,
And I’ve got you by my side.
I’ve got thunder in the valley,
And this bone-dry mountain high.
Walking up the mountain, climbing side by side,
Walking up the mountain, with you.