Longing, the complaint of the surrendered
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
तुह्मांसाटीं आह्मां आपुला विसर । करितां अव्हेर कैसें दिसे ॥1॥
विचाराजी आतां ठायीचें हे देवा । आह्मां नये हेवा वाढवितां ॥ध्रु.॥
आलों टाकोनियां सुखाची वसती । पुढें माझ्या युक्ति खुंटलिया ॥2॥
तुका ह्मणे जाला सकळ वृत्तांत । केला प्रणिपात ह्मणऊनि ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
For Your sake, we have forgotten ourselves. How does it look when You disregard us? Consider this from the beginning, O God. We cannot bear it when You increase our longing. We left behind the comforts of home, and now our wits have reached their end. Says Tuka, the whole story has been told; that is why I make this prostration.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
For Your sake we have forgotten ourselves. When You turn us away, how does that look? Think it over from the start now, God. Do not keep swelling our longing; we cannot bear it. We came, leaving behind the home where we were happy. Now our wits have run out ahead of us. Tuka says: the whole story is told. That is why I bow down low.
What it means
This is the complaint of someone who has already given everything. Tukaram says he has forgotten his own self for God's sake, and then asks how it can look right for God to push him away. He names the real grievance: God keeps increasing the longing rather than fulfilling it, and that the surrendered cannot endure, having left behind every comfort and exhausted their own cleverness. Having laid the whole case out, he ends not in argument but in prostration, putting the matter wholly in God's hands.
Longing and Separation
Cries from the dark night of the soul: remonstrances, complaints, and desperate yearning.
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