Saints, quarreling with the sky
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
धोंडएासवें आदिळतां फुटे डोकें । तों तों त्याच्या सुखें घामेजेना ॥1॥
इंगळासी सन्निधान अतित्याई । क्षेम देतां काई सुख वाटे ॥2॥
तुका ह्मणे आह्मांसवें जो रुसला । तयाचा अबोला आकाशासीं ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
If you butt your head against a stone, your skull will crack, but the stone feels no discomfort. To embrace a live ember is to discover what kind of welcome that is. Says Tuka, whoever quarrels with us has quarreled with the sky itself; his silence reaches no one.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
Butt your head against a stone and your skull cracks; the stone does not even sweat for your trouble. Go and embrace a live coal, and see what kind of welcome that is. Tuka says: whoever sulks against us has sulked against the sky. His silence reaches no one.
What it means
Tukaram answers those who pick a fight with the saints by showing them where the damage lands. Butt your head on a stone and only your head breaks; clutch a burning ember and you learn what that embrace costs. The one who quarrels is the one who is hurt; the saint, like the stone, is untouched. And to sulk at a saint, he says, is to sulk at the sky itself: your cold silence falls on something so vast and impersonal that it reaches no one and changes nothing. The warning is aimed at the quarreler's own bruised pride, not at the saint.
The Saints
The character and service of true saints: softer than butter, harder than diamond.
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