Experience, the seed that cannot sprout again
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
बीज भाजुनि केली लाही । आह्मां जन्ममरण नाहीं॥1॥
आकाराशी कैंचा ठाव । देहप्रत्यक्ष जाला देव ॥ध्रु.॥
साकरेचा नव्हे उस । आह्मां कैंचा गर्भवास ॥2॥
तुका ह्मणे औघा योग । सर्वां घटीं पांडुरंग ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
The seed has been roasted into puffed grain; for us there is no more birth and death. Where can form find a foothold when the body itself has become God? Sugar cannot return to sugarcane; how then can we return to the womb? Says Tuka, by the common path of yoga, Panduranga dwells in every being.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
The seed has been roasted into puffed grain; for us there is no more birth and death. Where can form find a place to stand, when the body itself has plainly become God? Sugar can never go back to being sugarcane. How then can there be any womb left for us? Tuka says: this is the whole of yoga. Panduranga is in every vessel.
What it means
Tukaram states the fruit of his realization through two images of an irreversible change. A seed roasted into puffed grain can never sprout again, and sugar can never turn back into the cane it came from; in the same way, for him birth and death are finished, with no womb left to return to. He pushes the claim as far as it goes: form itself has nowhere to stand, because this very body has plainly become God. Then he closes by widening it past himself, saying this is the whole of yoga, the one thing it all comes to. The same Panduranga he has merged into dwells, he says, in every single being.
The Necessity of Experience
Why direct experience of God, not mere learning, is the only path.
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