Moral protest, Narayana in every body
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
जीवें जीव नेणे पापी सारिका चि । नळी दुजयाची कापूं बैसे ॥1॥
आत्मा नारायण सर्वां घटीं आहे । पशुमध्यें काय कळों नये ॥ध्रु.॥
देखत हा जीव हुंबरे वरडत । निष्ठाचे हात वाहाती कैसे ॥2॥
तुका ह्मणे तया चांडाळासी नर्क । भोगिती अनेक महादुःखें ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
The sinful one does not recognize that every being shares the same life-breath. Like a parrot, he sits ready to snip another's stem. Narayana, the Self, dwells in every body. Should this not be evident even among animals? The living creature howls and bellows in plain sight, yet the merciless hands keep working. Says Tuka, such wretches will endure countless torments in hell.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
The sinner does not feel that every life is one life like his own. Like a butcher he sits down to cut another's throat. The Self, Narayana, lives in every body. Should this not be known even among the animals? Right before his eyes the creature lows and cries out, yet how do these merciless hands keep moving? Tuka says: such a wretch goes to hell. He suffers many great agonies there.
What it means
Tukaram condemns cruelty to living beings by grounding it in non-duality. The killer's blindness is that he cannot feel another's life as the same life that beats in him. But the same Self, named Narayana here, dwells in every body, and that includes the animal he is about to slaughter. The poem stares at the scene without flinching: the creature bellows and weeps in plain sight, and still the hands do not stop. Tukaram aims his warning at the hardness that lets a person ignore obvious suffering, and he insists such hardness has a cost, calling it a road into great torment.
The Moral Ideal
Purity, sincerity, truthfulness, humility, peacefulness, and service.
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