Ecstasy, the Name worth more than liberation
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
तेथें सुखाची वसति । गाती वैष्णव नाचती । पताका झळकती । गर्जती हरिनामें ॥1॥
दोषा जाली घेघेमारी । पळती भरले दिशा चारी । न येती माघारीं । नाहीं उरी परताया ॥ध्रु.॥
विसरोनि देवपणा । उभा पंढरीचा राणा । विटोनि निर्गुणा । रूप धरिलें गोजिरें ॥2॥
पोट सेवितां न धाये । भूक भुकेली च राहे । तुका ह्मणे पाहे । कोण आस या मुक्तीची ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
There, in that place, happiness dwells. The Vaishnavas sing and dance. Banners flutter, and the name of Hari thunders forth. All sins are driven out in a stampede, fleeing to the four directions, never to return; they have no means to come back. Forgetting His own divinity, the King of Pandhari stands upon the brick. Renouncing the formless, He has taken on this beautiful form. The belly is never satisfied with tasting Him; hunger remains ever hungry. Says Tuka, who cares for this liberation? Tell me, what is the use of it?.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
There, in that place, happiness lives. The Vaishnavas sing, and they dance. Banners flutter. The name of Hari thunders out. The sins panic and flee in all four directions. They run and never come back; there is no way back for them. Forgetting that he is God, the King of Pandhari stands upon the brick. He set aside the formless and took on this lovely form. Feeding on him, the belly is never full. The hunger stays hungry. Tuka says: who cares about liberation? What is the use of it?
What it means
Tukaram paints the kirtan as the dwelling place of joy, where singing, dancing, and the roar of Hari's name drive sin away so completely it has no road back. At the center stands Vitthal on the brick at Pandhari, God who forgot his own grandeur and left the formless behind to take a form a devotee can love. Then comes the radical turn: tasting this God never fills you, the hunger only deepens, and that endless hunger is itself the treasure. So Tukaram waves off liberation as worthless beside it; release would end the very longing he would rather keep forever.
Ecstasy and Joy
Triumphant happiness: poems written from the far side of the struggle.
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