Devotion, never for a moment without him
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
माझी सर्व चिंता आहे विठोबासी । मी त्याच्या पायांसी न विसंभें ॥1॥
विसरतां रूप क्षण एक चित्तीं । जिवलग मूर्ती सांवळी ते ॥ध्रु.॥
विसरतां हरी क्षण एक घडी । अंतरली जोडी लक्षलाभ ॥2॥
तुका ह्मणे माझ्या विठोबाचे पाये । संजीवनी आहे हृदयामाजी ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
All my care rests with Vithoba; I do not stray from His feet for a moment. If I forget that dear, dark form for even one instant, my chitta cannot bear it. If I forget Hari for even a single moment, the treasury of a hundred thousand gains is lost. Says Tuka, the feet of my Vithoba are the life-giving herb lodged within my heart.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
All my care rests with Vithoba; I do not leave his feet for a moment. If that dear dark form slips from my mind for even one instant, my heart cannot bear it. If I forget Hari for even a single moment, a treasury of a hundred thousand gains is lost. Tuka says: the feet of my Vithoba are the life-giving herb within my heart.
What it means
Tukaram describes a love that will not tolerate a single gap. He has handed his whole anxious mind over to Vithoba and refuses to step away from his feet, because even an instant's forgetting of that dark, beloved form is unbearable to him. He weighs the cost in plain terms: one moment without Hari is a fortune lost, a hundred thousand gains gone. The closing image makes the stakes physical; Vithoba's feet are the sanjivani, the herb that brings the dead back to life, lodged in his own heart. To forget would be to lose the very thing keeping him alive.
Devotion to Vitthal
Poems of praise, invocation, and intimate address to Lord Vitthal at Pandharpur.
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