Exhortation, death and the clinging mind
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
क्या कहुं नहीं बुझत लोका । लिजावे जम मारत धका ॥1॥
क्या जीवनेकी पकडी आस । हातों लिया नहिं तेरा घांस ॥ध्रु.॥
किसे दिवाने कहता मेरा । कछु जावे तन तूं सब ल्या न्यारा ॥2॥
कहे तुका तूं भया दिवाना । आपना विचार कर ले जाना ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
What can I say? These people will not understand. Death comes and carries them off with a shove. Why do you cling to life? Death will not leave even a blade of grass in your hands. Who is the madman who keeps calling things "mine"? When the body departs, everything you claimed is left behind. Says Tuka, you have become a madman. Think it over before you go.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
What can I say? These people will not understand. Death comes and drags them off with a shove. Why do you cling to the hope of living? Death will not leave even a blade of grass in your hands. Who is the madman that keeps calling things his own? When the body goes, everything you claimed is left behind. Tuka says: you have become a madman. Think it over before you go.
What it means
Tukaram is warning the listener who lives as though life will not end. Death comes for everyone and takes them away with no gentleness, and it leaves nothing in the hand, not even a wisp of grass. To go on calling wealth and body and people mine is the act of a madman, because when the body falls all of it stays behind and only the soul departs empty. He turns the charge directly on the hearer: you are that madman. The point is not contempt but a shaking awake, so that one reckons with this truth while there is still time before the body goes.
Appeals and Exhortations
Direct calls to action: wake up, seek God, do not waste this human birth.
More in this theme →