Moral ideal, the meat-eater's self-harm
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
मांस खातां हाउस करी । जोडुनि वैरी ठेवियेला॥1॥
कोण त्याची करिल कींव । जीवें जीव नेणती ॥ध्रु.॥
पुढिलांसाटीं पाजवी सुरी । आपुली चोरी अंगुळी ॥2॥
तुका ह्मणे कुटिती हाडें। आपुल्या नाडें रडती ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
One who eats flesh with relish has kept an enemy bound to himself. Who will show pity to him when he does not even recognize life in another life? He sharpens the blade for others while secretly cutting his own finger. Says Tuka, they crush bones yet weep over their own undoing.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
One who eats flesh with relish has tied an enemy to himself. Who will pity him? He cannot see the life in another life. He whets the knife for the one in front of him, while quietly cutting his own finger. Tuka says: they crush bones, and weep over their own ruin.
What it means
This abhanga turns the act of eating flesh back on the one who does it. To kill for the taste, Tukaram says, is to bind an enemy to yourself, because you blind yourself to the life living in the creature you eat. The sharp image is of a man whetting a blade for the animal before him without seeing that the same edge is cutting his own finger. The harm is not out there; it is the hardening of a heart that no longer recognizes life, and the abhanga points at that pattern and asks the reader to examine it, not to despise the person caught in it.
The Moral Ideal
Purity, sincerity, truthfulness, humility, peacefulness, and service.
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