Praise of saints, the company that frees
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
कोण पुण्य कोणा गांठी । ज्यासी ऐसियांची भेटी॥1॥
जिहीं हरी धरिला मनीं । दिलें संवसारा पाणी ॥ध्रु.॥
तुका ह्मणे त्यांचे भेटी। होय संसारासी तुटी ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
What great merit brings one the company of those who have held Hari in their minds and renounced the world? Says Tuka, in meeting such souls, one's bondage to worldly life is broken.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
What great merit, stored up in whom, lets a person meet souls like these? They have held Hari in their minds. They have poured water on the world and let it go. Tuka says: in meeting them, the bond with worldly life is cut.
What it means
Tukaram marvels at the rare good fortune of meeting true saints. He asks what immense store of merit a person must carry to be granted such company, those who keep Hari fixed in their minds and have poured the funeral water over the world, treating it as already dead to them. The stake he names is liberation itself: simply meeting such souls severs one's bondage to samsara. The poem makes the saints' company, not one's own effort, the door that opens.
The Saints
The character and service of true saints: softer than butter, harder than diamond.
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