Confession, the pretender's helplessness
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
बोल नाहीं तुझ्या दातृत्वपणासी । आह्मी अविश्वासी सर्वभावें ॥1॥
दंभें करी भक्ती सोंग दावी जना । अंतरीं भावना वेगिळया ॥2॥
तुका ह्मणे देवा तूं काय करिसी । कर्मा दुस्तरासी आमुचिया ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
There is no fault in Your generosity. It is I who lack faith in every way. My devotion is a pretense performed for show before people, while my inner intentions are altogether different. Says Tuka, O God, what can You do against the insurmountable force of our own karma?.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
There is no fault in Your generosity. It is I who lack faith, in every way. My devotion is a pretense, a show put on before people, while inside my heart wants something else entirely. Tuka says: O God, what can even You do against the hard, uncrossable force of our karma?
What it means
Tukaram clears God of all blame and lays it squarely on himself. God's generosity is whole; the failure is the poet's own faithlessness. He names the precise shape of that failure: outward devotion performed for an audience while the inner heart is turned elsewhere, which is hypocrisy seen from inside. The closing line is honest despair, not theology: when a person's own karma is this stubborn, the question is what even God can do, and Tukaram leaves it as a question pointed at his own divided heart, not at God.
Confession and Sin
Raw, unflinching accounts of personal failure, weakness, and the weight of sin.
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