Liberation, the root cut
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
पुण्यपापा ठाव नाहीं सुखदुःखा । हानिलाभशंका नासलिया ॥1॥
जिंता मरण आलें आप पर गेलें । मूळ छेदियेलें संसाराचें ॥ध्रु.॥
अधिकार जाती वर्णधर्मयाती । ठाव नाहीं सत्यअसत्याशी ॥2॥
जन वन भिन्न आचेत चळण । नाहीं दुजेपण ठाव यासी ॥3॥
तुका ह्मणें देह वाईलें विठ्ठलीं । तेव्हां च घडली सर्व पूजा ॥4॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
There is no place for merit or sin, pleasure or pain, once the fear of loss and gain is destroyed. Living death has come: self and other are gone, and the very root of worldly existence has been cut. Authority, caste, and creed lose their ground; truth and falsehood themselves have no place. Town and forest, stillness and motion, are no longer separate; there is no room for duality. Says Tuka, when the body was offered to Vitthal, all worship was at once complete.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
There is no place for merit or sin, none for pleasure or pain, once the fear of loss and gain is gone. Living, death has come. Self and other are gone. The root of worldly life is cut. Authority, caste, the duties of birth, all lose their ground. Truth and falsehood have no place. Town and forest, stillness and motion, are no longer two. There is no room left for duality. Tuka says: when the body was given to Vitthal, all worship was complete at once.
What it means
Tukaram is describing what is left after the self dies while the body still lives. Once the fear of loss and gain dissolves, the whole grid of opposites loses its hold: merit and sin, pleasure and pain, self and other, even the social map of caste and authority and the line between true and false. He says town and forest, stillness and motion, are no longer separate, because duality itself has no foothold anymore. The radical claim is in the last line: he did not perform countless rites; he simply gave the body to Vitthal, and in that single act of surrender every form of worship was already finished.
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