Devotion, one work only
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
कोण वेची वाणी । आतां क्षुल्लका कारणीं ॥1॥
आतां हें चि काम करूं । विठ्ठल हृदयांत धरूं ॥ध्रु.॥
नेंदाविया वृित्त। आतां उठों चि बहुती ॥2॥
उपदेश लोकां । करूनी वेडा होतो तुका ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
Who would waste their speech now on trifling matters? From now on, this alone is my work: to hold Vitthal in the heart. I will not allow the mind's tendencies to rise up any further. Says Tuka, after instructing the world, I become the madman myself.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
Who would spend speech now on trifling things? From now on this alone is my work: to hold Vitthal in the heart. I will not let the mind's tendencies rise up again. Tuka says: after instructing the world, I become the madman myself.
What it means
Tukaram declares a single occupation and lets everything else fall away as not worth a word. The one work is to keep Vitthal held in the heart, and to refuse the old habits of mind the moment they try to stir. The closing line turns the irony on himself: he has spent his life teaching others, yet by the world's measure he is the one who looks deranged. He owns that name gladly, because the madness is only that he wants God and nothing smaller.
Devotion to Vitthal
Poems of praise, invocation, and intimate address to Lord Vitthal at Pandharpur.
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