Bondage of karma, the rope of mine and yours
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
चुकलों या ऐशा वर्मा । तरी कर्मा सांपडलों ॥1॥
पाठी लागे करी नास । गर्भवास भोगवी ॥ध्रु.॥
माझें तुझें भिन्नभावें। गळां दावें मोहाचें ॥2॥
तुका ह्मणे पाठेळ केलों । नसत्या भ्यालों छंदासी ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
If I miss this vital secret, then I fall into the hands of karma. It pursues me and causes ruin, forcing me to endure the womb again and again. The sense of 'mine' and 'Yours' as separate binds the rope of delusion around my neck. Says Tuka, I was driven to despair, frightened by pursuits that were never real.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
If I miss this vital secret, then I fall into the hands of karma. It hunts me down and ruins me. It makes me suffer the womb again and again. The feeling that things are mine and Yours, kept apart, ties the rope of delusion around my neck. Tuka says: I have been driven to despair, frightened by pursuits that were never real.
What it means
Tukaram names what happens when a person forgets the one essential thing and lives as if the world were really divided into mine and yours. That very sense of separateness, he says, is the noose: it binds you to karma, which then pursues you and forces birth after birth in the womb. The harshness is aimed at the pattern of grasping, not at any one soul; he places himself inside it, confessing that he too has been worn down by chasing things that turned out to be unreal.
Worldly Life
The perplexities of action, karma, and navigating life in the world.
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