Devotion, keep the loving distance
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
तुह्मां आह्मां जंव जालिया समान । तेथें कोणां कोण सनमानी ॥1॥
उरी तों राहिली गोमटें गौरव । ओढे माझा जीव पायांपाशीं ॥ध्रु.॥
नेणपणें आह्मी आळवूं वोरसें । बोलवितों रसें शब्दरत्नें ॥2॥
तुका ह्मणे लळे पाळीं वो विठ्ठले । कां हे उरविले भेदाभेद ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
When You and I become equal, who will honor whom? So long as some distance remains, there is grace and dignity; my jiva is drawn toward Your feet. In my innocence I call out to You with affection, stringing together words like jewels of feeling. Says Tuka, O Vitthale, indulge my childish ways. Why have You preserved these distinctions of difference?.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
If you and I were made equal, then who would honor whom? While some distance still remains, there is sweetness and grace, and my soul is drawn toward your feet. In my not-knowing I call out to you with affection; I coax you with words strung like jewels. Tuka says: indulge my childish wishes, O Vitthala. But why have you kept up this difference between us?
What it means
Tukaram plays with the paradox of nearness and distance in devotion. If devotee and God became simply equal, the whole relation of honoring and being honored would dissolve, and so would the sweetness of it; the small remaining gap is exactly what draws his soul toward God's feet and lets love happen. From his side of that gap he calls out in loving ignorance, coaxing God with words he strings together like jewels. He asks Vitthal to humor his childlike pleading, and then teasingly turns the question back: why have you yourself kept this difference between us in place? He half-suspects God preserves the distance on purpose, because love lives in it.
Devotion to Vitthal
Poems of praise, invocation, and intimate address to Lord Vitthal at Pandharpur.
More in this theme →