God Himself Becomes the Guru

The refrain lays out the whole economy of the relationship in two small sentences. While the sense of body remains, he satisfies our longings. And in the end, he draws us to himself. This is the shape of a life taken up by the Lord, stated with almost shocking brevity. Tukaram does not say the Lord demands that you first renounce your longings and only then come to him. He says the Lord satisfies the longings, patiently, while the body-sense is still operating, and then, at the end, takes the devotee into himself. Two movements. One held the whole life long. The other, waiting at the last breath.

The word padhiyen carries as long as, for the duration of. The word dehanbhava names the sense of body, the phenomenological condition of being an embodied person with desires. The word puravi names the satisfying, the fulfilling, the making complete. The word vasana names the longings themselves, the residual desires that move through any body still held in time. And apanapashin nyaven, he draws to his own side, names the final absorption. The refrain that returns between every verse holds the whole shape. Longings held and satisfied while the body lasts. Absorption into the Lord at the end. One Lord doing both.

The Living Words

Padhiyen dehanbhava puravi vasana. As long as the sense of body remains, he satisfies the longings. Padhiyen is a Marathi conjunction meaning while, for as long as, during. Dehanbhava is the state of being body-identified, the felt sense of being this particular embodied self. Puravi, from purne, to fill, to complete, to make whole. Vasana is longing, desire, the residual wanting that moves through a life. The verb is active, not punitive. The Lord does not wait for the longings to end. He fills them.

Antin ten apanapashin nyaven. In the end, he draws that one to his own side. Antin means at the last, in the end, at the final. Ten is an emphatic particle, that very one. Apanapashin is to his own presence, to his own side, to himself. Nyaven, from neyne, to lead, to carry, to take. The verb is again active, and again belongs to the Lord. He satisfies the longings during life. He carries the devotee to himself at the end. The refrain sets up a single arc with two motions, and both motions belong to the Lord, not to the devotee.

Scripture References

The Heart of It

A refrain in a Warkari abhanga is where the saint tells the truth in its shortest form. The verses elaborate. The refrain repeats. Whatever the refrain says is what you will be thinking about long after the chant has ended. This refrain, short as it is, holds the whole theological shape of Tukaram's opening claim.

The Lord does two things. First, while the body-sense is still in operation, he satisfies the longings. Second, at the end, he draws the devotee to himself. Hold both of these side by side and notice what they refuse.

They refuse the version of religion that requires you to crush your desires before the Lord will notice you. They refuse the version that requires you to become a perfect renunciate before grace is permitted to reach you. The refrain says something different. While you are still a creature with longings, while you are still walking around in a body and feeling the pull of small desires, the Lord is already with you. He is already at work. What he is doing is not shaming you for the desires. He is satisfying them. The verb is puravi, he fills. Not chhatave, he cuts off. The Lord meets the devotee where the devotee actually is, in a body, with longings, with the whole muddled economy of an embodied life.

Why does he do this? Because he is patient, and because patience is the shape of this particular love. A harsher teacher might say, first empty yourself of all desire, and then I will take you up. This is not Tukaram's Lord. Tukaram's Lord comes in under the desires and begins to fulfill them, slowly, in a way that gradually reshapes what the devotee actually longs for. The satisfaction itself becomes a form of teaching. The longings, met by the Lord, begin to clarify. The small desires are met in ways that show the devotee what the small desires were really reaching for. And over time, the body-sense settles, not because it has been suppressed but because it has been answered.

This is the compassion of the Warkari path. It does not ask you to shame your desires out of existence. It asks you to bring them to the Lord and let them be fulfilled in his presence, where they will be gently reshaped until, eventually, there is only one longing left, and that longing is the Lord himself.

And then the second half of the refrain. At the end, he draws that very one to himself. The word antin does not mean death in the narrow medical sense. It means at the last, the final, the completion. It is the end of this arc of embodiment. The one whose longings have been satisfied during the body-sense, who has been gently reshaped by a lifetime of such satisfactions, is at the last drawn into the Lord's own side. Apanapashin nyaven. He is taken home.

Notice that the devotee does not walk home on his own. The verb is nyaven, he is led, he is carried. The Lord does the leading. The devotee, having spent a life being patiently satisfied, is at the end patiently taken in. Both movements belong to the Lord. The devotee's contribution is simply to remain available. To keep bringing the longings. To keep letting them be satisfied. To keep walking. The final absorption is the Lord's gift, just as the ongoing satisfaction was.

This is, in compressed form, the Warkari response to the whole economy of karma and liberation as popular religion often frames it. Popular religion frames the arc as: work off your karma, purify your desires, earn your moksha. Tukaram's refrain frames the arc as: the Lord satisfies your desires while you live, and he takes you home when you die. The work of purification is his. The final liberation is his. Your task is to be available, which is another way of saying your task is trust.

The Bhagavad Gita says this directly in chapter eighteen. Abandon all dharmas and take refuge in Me alone. I will free you from all sins. Do not grieve. The verb is future indicative, mokshayishyami, I will liberate. The Lord promises the liberation. The devotee's job is to take refuge. Tukaram's refrain is a Warkari paraphrase of this Gita promise, and the paraphrase preserves the core: the work of freeing is the Lord's work. The devotee only has to remain available.

There is also a pastoral consequence that must not be missed. If the Lord satisfies the longings while the body lasts, then the small fulfillments that come to you during your life, the sufficient meal, the warm shelter, the unexpected kindness, are not accidents. They are the Lord doing exactly what Tukaram says he does. He satisfies the longings. Puravi vasana. When a small need is met in a way that surprises you with its fit, the tradition reads this as the Lord fulfilling what he has promised to fulfill. Not every longing. Not every desire gratified on demand. The pattern over a life is what the refrain names. The Lord is carrying the economy of your wanting, slowly bringing into your life what is needed, patiently reshaping what is not.

And the Bhagavata Purana gives an even more tender version of this in the figure of Kunti. Kunti, in her famous prayer after the war, asks the Lord not for comfort but for adversity, because adversity kept her remembering him and remembering him was the only thing she wanted. The longing had been so thoroughly reshaped that her vasana had become a vasana for him. This is the refrain's final implication. The Lord does not only satisfy the longings. Over a lifetime of satisfying them, he reshapes them, until the only longing left is the one the final absorption will perfectly complete.

The Saints Who Walked This Road

The Warkari corpus is full of saints who lived inside this refrain. The pattern is always the same. The Lord met the ordinary longings of a life, sometimes with remarkable tenderness, and at the end drew the saint home. The two-fold movement Tukaram names is not a theological abstraction in the Warkari telling. It is a lived biography.

Dnyaneshwar, whose samadhi at Alandi closes the Haripath, lived a life of deep poverty and social rejection alongside his siblings. The four orphaned children of Vitthalpant, cast out by the Brahmanical community because their father had been a renunciate who returned to householder life, wandered from village to village seeking acceptance. Through that wandering, tradition says, the Lord was at work. Small kindnesses found them. A buffalo recited the Vedas when Dnyaneshwar was challenged. A wall moved to meet Changdev the yogi. Their daily bread was always just sufficient. The Warkari reading is that throughout their short lives the Lord was doing what the refrain describes, satisfying the longings of these four as the body-sense lasted. And at the end, Dnyaneshwar walked into sanjivan samadhi at Alandi at the age of twenty-one. The final absorption, in the tradition's telling, was gentle and absolute. He was drawn to the Lord's side.

Namdev, in his long life, reports again and again that Vitthal met the small longings of his daily existence. When his family was hungry, the food arrived. When he was lonely, the Lord sat with him. When his daughter asked for a doll, he tells in one abhanga, Vitthal provided. These small satisfactions are not hagiographic ornament. They are the refrain's puravi vasana, made concrete. And at the end of his life, after his travels through the north and his long service as the singer of the Name, Namdev was drawn home by the same Lord who had fed him.

Eknath lived this refrain in a different register. A householder with a family, a scholar with students, an administrator of his household's affairs, he carried the full weight of an embedded social life. And throughout that life, tradition remembers, the Lord satisfied the small longings in unexpected ways. Eknath's hospitality was legendary, and the supply of food for uninvited guests, including outcastes whom the orthodoxy disapproved of his feeding, was said never to run short. The Lord was doing what the refrain says he does. And at the end, Eknath walked into the Godavari and was drawn to his Lord.

Janabai's story is the most intimate. She lived as a servant in Namdev's household, without wealth or social position. And yet her abhangas record a life in which Vitthal met her longings in the kitchen. When she was tired, he ground the grain. When she was cold, he came to warm her. When she was hungry, she shared her simple meal with him and found it multiplied. These small fulfillments are the Warkari lived proof of the refrain. And at the end, Janabai is said to have sat with the Name on her lips, and the Lord drew her home as he had always drawn her near.

Chokhamela and his family lived the refrain in the shadow of social oppression. Barred from the temple precinct, carrying the heaviest social burdens of their time, they nonetheless sang of a Lord who met them at the gate. The small sustenance they had, in Chokhamela's abhangas, came through him. The final absorption, in their telling, came through him as well. Tukaram inherited this vision and sang it into the compressed form of this refrain.

And Tukaram himself is the most famous case of all. His abhangas record a life in which the Lord satisfied the small longings through a kind of patient providence, even through the early losses of his family in the famine, even through the destruction of his manuscripts, even through the persecution by his opponents. Through all of it, tradition remembers, he was being carried. And at the end, tradition holds, he departed from Dehu in sadeh vaikuntha gaman, the ascent to Vaikuntha in the body. The final drawing to the Lord's side was so complete that no body remained behind. Whether one takes this literally or as an image of the absolute completeness of the final absorption, the refrain's shape is preserved. The Lord satisfied the longings while the body-sense lasted. The Lord drew the devotee home at the end.