Saints, not for sale at any price
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
नाहीं संतपण मिळतें हें हाटीं । हिंडतां कपाटीं रानीं वनीं ॥1॥
नये मोल देतां धनाचिया राशी । नाहीं तें आकाशीं पाताळीं तें ॥1॥
तुका ह्मणे मिळे जिवाचिये साटीं । नाहीं तरी गोष्टी बोलों नये ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
Saintliness cannot be bought in the marketplace. It is not found by wandering through shops, forests, or wildernesses. It cannot be purchased for heaps of gold. It is not in the sky above or in the netherworld below. Says Tuka, it is obtained only at the cost of the jiva. Otherwise, it is better not even to speak of it.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
Saintliness cannot be bought in the marketplace. It is not found by wandering through shops, forests, or wildernesses. It cannot be purchased for heaps of gold. It is not in the sky above or in the netherworld below. Tuka says: it is obtained only at the cost of the jiva. Otherwise, it is better not even to speak of it.
What it means
Tukaram denies every easy route to saintliness. It is not a thing on a stall to be bought, not found by roaming through shops or forests, not had for piles of gold, not hidden somewhere in the heavens or the underworld to be fetched. He names the one true price plainly: it costs the jiva, the very life or self of the seeker, who must give himself wholly. The closing line draws the line of seriousness. If you are not ready to pay that price, you should not even talk about it, because cheap words about saintliness are themselves a kind of falseness.
The Saints
The character and service of true saints: softer than butter, harder than diamond.
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