Moral ideal, the heart without mercy
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
धिग तो दुर्जन नाहीं भूतदया । व्यर्थ तया माया प्रसवली ॥1॥
कठिण हृदय तया चांडाळाचें । नेणे पराचें दुःख कांहीं ॥ध्रु.॥
आपुला का प्राण तैसे सकळ लोक । न करी विवेक पशु जैसा ॥2॥
तुका ह्मणे सुखें कापीतसे गळे । आपुलिया वेळे रडतसे ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
Shame on the cruel one who has no compassion for living beings; his mother gave birth in vain. Hard is the heart of that wretch; he knows nothing of another's pain. He does not see that his own life-breath is the same as that of all beings. He lacks all discernment, like an animal. Says Tuka, he happily cuts the throats of others, yet when his own time comes, he weeps.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
Shame on the cruel man who has no pity for living beings; his mother bore him for nothing. Hard is the heart of that wretch; he knows nothing of another's pain. He does not see that his own breath of life is the same breath in all beings. He weighs nothing, like an animal. Tuka says: he gladly cuts the throats of others, yet when his own turn comes, he weeps.
What it means
Tukaram measures a person by one thing, compassion for living beings, and finds the cruel man failing it completely. The reason he gives is spiritual, not merely sentimental: the same life-breath moves in him and in every creature, so harming another is a kind of blindness to that shared life. To miss this, Tukaram says, is to live without discernment, on the level of an animal. The closing line catches the cruel man's hypocrisy: he inflicts on others exactly the suffering he cannot bear when it turns toward him. The poem points at the pattern of a heart that feels its own pain but is dead to everyone else's.
The Moral Ideal
Purity, sincerity, truthfulness, humility, peacefulness, and service.
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