Dakhnee Onkaar

Dakhanee Ongkaar is one of Guru Nanak's great cosmological poems — fifty-four stanzas (plus an opening refrain) built as an acrostic on the sounds of the Gurmukhi alphabet. It opens with the word that names the whole tradition, Ongkaar (Ik Onkaar): the One creative Sound and Reality from which Brahma, the mountains, the ages, and even the scriptures flow. The opening verse names the primal syllable — onam akhar, the ancient sacred sound reframed — as "the essence of the three worlds."