Longing, asking to see and embrace the feet
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
भावबळें कैसा जालासी लाहान । मागें संतीं ध्यान वणिनयेलें ॥1॥
तें मज उचित करूनियां देवा । दाखवीं केशवा मायबापा ॥ध्रु.॥
पाहोनियां डोळां बोलेन मी गोष्टी । आळंगुनि मिठी देइन पांयीं ॥2॥
चरणीं दृिष्ट उभा राहेन समोर । जोडोनियां कर पुढें दोन्ही ॥3॥
तुका ह्मणे उत्कंठित वासना । पुरवीं नारायणा आर्त माझें ॥4॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
By the power of devotion, You became small. The saints of old have described Your meditation. Show me that vision now, O Keshava, Father and Mother, in a form befitting me. Let me see You with my own eyes and speak to You. Let me embrace Your feet and cling to them. Let me stand before You with my gaze fixed upon Your feet and my two hands folded. Says Tuka, my longing is desperate. Fulfill this yearning, O Narayana.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
By the strength of devotion you became small. The saints of long ago described how you meditate. Make that fitting for me now, O God; show it to me, Keshava, my mother and father. Let me see you with my eyes and speak to you. Let me embrace your feet and cling to them. Let me stand before you, my gaze on your feet, my two hands folded in front. Tuka says: my longing is desperate. Fulfill this ache of mine, O Narayana.
What it means
Tukaram is asking for the personal, embodied vision that bhakti makes possible. He recalls that devotion drew the vast God down into a small, approachable form, the form the old saints contemplated, and he begs for that same nearness shaped to his own capacity. His requests are concrete and bodily: to see, to speak, to embrace the feet, to stand with folded hands before God. This is not an abstract realization he wants but a face-to-face meeting. He closes by naming the intensity plainly, calling his longing desperate and laying the whole ache before Narayana to satisfy.
Longing and Separation
Cries from the dark night of the soul: remonstrances, complaints, and desperate yearning.
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