The Name, the one needed work
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
आह्मां सर्वभावें हें चि काम । न विसंभावें तुझें नाम॥1॥
न लगे करावी हे चिंता । तरणें करणें काय आतां॥ध्रु.॥
आसनीं भोजनीं शयनीं । दुजें नाहीं ध्यानीं मनीं ॥2॥
तुका ह्मणे कृपानिधी । माझी तोडिली उपाधी ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
With all my being, this alone is my work: never to lose hold of Your name. There is no need for any other worry now about crossing over or achieving anything. In sitting, in eating, in sleeping, nothing else occupies my thought and my mind. Says Tuka, O treasury of mercy, You have severed all my entanglements.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
With all my being, this alone is my work: never to let go of Your name. There is no need to worry now about crossing over or achieving anything. In sitting, in eating, in sleeping, nothing else fills my thought and my mind. Tuka says: O treasury of mercy, You have cut away all my entanglements.
What it means
Tukaram reduces the whole of practice to one thing: holding the Name without a break. Once that grip is constant, the old anxieties fall away, since crossing the world and reaching any goal are no longer separate tasks to fret over. The Name saturates every ordinary moment, sitting, eating, sleeping, until there is simply no room left for a second thing in the mind. He credits the result entirely to God's mercy: it is God who has severed the tangles, not the devotee's own effort. The poem rests in that ease, where remembering is everything and striving has ended.
The Power of the Name
The supremacy of nama-smarana: God's name as the highest practice.
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