Metaphor, the deluded who feed their captor
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
आपुल्याचा भोत चाटी । मारी करंटीं पारिख्या॥1॥
ऐसें जन भुललें देवा । मिथ्या हेवा वाढवी ॥ध्रु.॥
गळ गिळी आविसें मासा । प्राण आशा घेतला ॥2॥
तुका ह्मणे बोकडमोहो । धरी पहा हो खाटिक ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
A person's own spirit licks the butter while beating the stranger. The world is thus deluded, O God, nourishing a false envy. The fish eagerly swallows the hook, and its life is taken by greed. Says Tuka, see how the goat nuzzles the very butcher who holds it.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
A person licks the butter that is his own undoing and beats the stranger instead. The world is fooled like this, O God, feeding a false envy. The fish swallows the hook with the bait, and greed takes its life. Tuka says: look, the goat nuzzles the very butcher who holds it.
What it means
Tukaram lines up images of creatures destroyed by what they crave. People lap up what ruins them while striking out at the harmless, and the whole world is deluded this way, fattening a false jealousy. The fish gulps the baited hook and dies of its own greed; the goat fondly nuzzles the butcher whose hand is already on it. He is naming the pattern of appetite that draws us toward our own death while we mistake it for pleasure, and asking us to see the trap we walk into willingly.
Worldly Metaphors
Poems using images from games, occupations, and daily life as spiritual teaching.
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