Experience, not borrowed words
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
नव्हती हे उसणे बोल । आहाच फोल रंजवण॥1॥
अनुभव तो वरावरी । नाहीं दुरी वेगळा ॥ध्रु.॥
पाहिजे तें आलें रुची।काचाकुची काशाची ॥2॥
तुका ह्मणे लाजे आड । त्याची चाड कोणासी ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
These are not borrowed words, for empty entertainment has no substance. Experience is not far or separate; it is right here on the surface. What is needed has come to taste. What use is pretense and struggle? Says Tuka, the one who hides behind shame, who cares for him?.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
These are not borrowed words; mere hollow talk has no substance. The experience is right here, close at hand, not far off and not separate. What was needed has come, and the taste of it is here; what use is pretense and struggle? Tuka says: as for the one who hangs back behind his shame, who cares for him?
What it means
Tukaram insists that what he speaks is not secondhand or repeated from others; empty words carry nothing. He is testifying from experience, and that experience is not somewhere far away but right here, near and not separate from him. Whatever he needed has arrived and he is tasting it, so there is no point in faking it or struggling to manufacture it. The closing jab is at the person who holds back out of false shame or self-consciousness: such hesitation, Tuka says, deserves no concern. The poem stakes its authority on lived experience over borrowed talk and hesitation.
The Necessity of Experience
Why direct experience of God, not mere learning, is the only path.
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