Confession, the moment never comes
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
किती एका दिसीं । बुिद्ध जाली होती ऐसी ॥1॥
कांहीं करावें स्वहित । तों हें न घडे उचित ॥ध्रु.॥
अवलंबुनी भीक। लाज सांडिली लौकिक ॥2॥
तुका ह्मणे दीन । जालों मनुष्यपणा हीन ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
On how many days has the thought arisen: I should do something for my own spiritual good? Yet the right moment never comes. I have taken up begging, casting aside all worldly shame. Says Tuka, I have become forlorn, lower even than human dignity.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
How many days the thought has come to me: I should do something for my own good. But the right moment never arrives. I have taken to begging. I have thrown away all worldly shame. Tuka says: I am wretched, fallen below even the dignity of a human being.
What it means
Tukaram confesses the gap between good intention and the act that never follows. Again and again he resolves to work for his own spiritual welfare, and again and again the right occasion slips past him, so the resolve stays a thought. He admits where this drift has left him: living off others, with the ordinary shame of respectable life cast aside. The harshness is aimed at himself, naming how endlessly postponed self-care can sink a person below even basic human standing, and the confession itself is the first honest move out of that pit.
Confession and Sin
Raw, unflinching accounts of personal failure, weakness, and the weight of sin.
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