Devotion, total single-pointing
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
ध्याइन तुझें रूप गाइन तुझें नाम । आणीक न करीं काम जिव्हामुखें ॥1॥
पाहिन तुझे पाय ठेविन तेथें डोय । पृथक तें काय न करीं मनीं ॥ध्रु.॥
तुझे चि गुणवाद आइकेन कानीं । आणिकांची वाणी पुरे आतां ॥2॥
करिन सेवा करीं चालेन मी पायीं । आणीक न वजें ठायीं तुजविण ॥3॥
तुका ह्मणे जीव ठेविला तुझ्या पायीं । आणीक तो काई देऊं कोणा ॥4॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
I will meditate upon Your form and sing Your Name; I will use my tongue and lips for nothing else. I will gaze upon Your feet and lay my eyes there; I will allow no separate thought to enter my mind. I will listen only to the praise of Your virtues; I have had enough of all other speech. I will serve You with my hands and walk to You with my feet; I will go nowhere without You. Says Tuka, I have placed my life at Your feet; what else do I have to give to anyone?.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
I will meditate on Your form and sing Your Name. My tongue and mouth will do no other work. I will look at Your feet and lay my eyes there. I will let no separate thought into my mind. I will hear only the telling of Your virtues in my ears. I have had enough of all other speech. I will do service with my hands and walk to You on my feet. I will go to no other place but You. Tuka says: I have set my life at Your feet. What else do I have left to give to anyone?
What it means
This abhanga is a vow that gathers every faculty onto one object. Tukaram pledges tongue, eyes, ears, hands, feet, and mind each to a single use: to praise, behold, hear, serve, and approach God, and nothing else. The repeated refusal of anything separate or other is the heart of it; devotion here means closing every door that does not open onto Vitthal. By ending with his life already laid at God's feet, he answers the implied question of cost: there is nothing held back to spend elsewhere. The poem holds up undivided attention as the whole of the path, the self spent entirely in one direction.
Devotion to Vitthal
Poems of praise, invocation, and intimate address to Lord Vitthal at Pandharpur.
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