Devotion, holding the feet, dropping the doctrines
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
ऐसीं वर्में आह्मां असोनियां हातीं । कां होऊं नेणतीं दिशाभुली ॥1॥
पोटाळुनी पाय कवळीन उभा । कृपे पद्मनाभा हालों नेदीं ॥ध्रु.॥
आपुले इच्छेसी घालीन संपुष्टीं । श्रीमुख तें दृष्टी न्याहाळीन ॥2॥
तुका ह्मणे बहु सांडियेलीं मतें । आपुल्या पुरतें धरुनी ठेलों ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
When such secrets are already in our hands, why should we become confused and lose our way? I shall clasp Your feet in an embrace and not let You move, O Padmanabha, O gracious one. I shall set aside my own desires and gaze steadily at Your blessed face. Says Tuka, I have abandoned many doctrines and hold firmly only to what suffices for me.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
These secrets are already in our hands. Why then should we grow confused and lose our way? I will hug Your feet and hold You standing there; by Your grace, O Padmanabha, I will not let You move. I will fold my own wishes away into a box. I will gaze steadily at Your blessed face. Tuka says: I have thrown away many opinions and held on only to what is enough for me.
What it means
Tukaram is describing a deliberate narrowing of the whole self onto God. He says the heart of the matter is already in his grasp, so there is no excuse for wandering off into confusion. His chosen path is bodily and intimate: clasp Vitthal's feet, refuse to let Him slip away, put his own desires aside as if shutting them in a box, and keep his eyes only on the Lord's face. The last line names the cost and the freedom together: he has dropped the crowd of competing doctrines and kept just the one thing that suffices.
Devotion to Vitthal
Poems of praise, invocation, and intimate address to Lord Vitthal at Pandharpur.
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