Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
**O** stands for *Onkaar* — the One from the very beginning, the Source of everything. That is what I hold onto.
I don't put my trust in things that come and go, that get written one day and erased the next. But whoever truly knows the One — the Source that was always there — they touch something that cannot be erased. Knowing the One, they last.
Here the acrostic reaches Onkaar — the primal Oneness, aad (the beginning, the origin). Kabir draws his sharp line: likh ar maytai taahi na maanaa — “I don't put my trust in what is written and then erased,” meaning the passing, changeable things (and, in his context, powers and idols people imagined as final that are themselves temporary). His trust rests only in the Imperishable. The reward is not a prize but a change of nature: soee lakh maytnaa na ho-ee — one who knows the unerasable becomes unerasable, sharing in what they recognize. To know the lasting is to become rooted in the lasting.
What is something in your life that stays the same no matter what changes around you?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI