Moral warning, you bear your own fault
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
सुखें न मनी अवगुण । दुःख भोगी त्याचें कोण ॥1॥
हें कां ठायींचें न कळे । राती करा झांकुनि डोळे ॥ध्रु.॥
चालोनि आड वाटे । पायीं मोडविले कांटे ॥2॥
तुका ह्मणे कोणा। बोल ठेवितो शाहाणा ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
If one happily ignores wrongdoing, who else will bear the resulting suffering? Why can you not see this plain truth? Close your eyes at night and walk the crooked path, and you will break your feet on thorns. Says Tuka, the one who thinks himself wise, whom does he blame then?
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
If you happily make light of your faults, who then bears the suffering they bring? Why can you not see this plain thing? Shut your eyes at night and walk the wrong path, and you drive thorns into your own feet. Tuka says: the man who thinks himself clever, whom does he have left to blame?
What it means
Tukaram warns against the comfortable habit of excusing one's own wrongdoing. The pain that wrong conduct breeds does not vanish because you ignore it; it falls back on the very person who shrugged it off, and no one else carries it for him. He draws a homely picture: choosing to walk a crooked road in the dark, eyes deliberately shut, ends with thorns in your own feet. The closing barb is aimed at self-deception, not at any other person: when the so-called wise man suffers what he set up, he has no one but himself to accuse.
The Moral Ideal
Purity, sincerity, truthfulness, humility, peacefulness, and service.
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