Ecstasy, joy at the sight
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
तुझें रूप पाहतां देवा । सुख जालें माझ्या जीवा॥1॥
हें तों वाचे बोलवेना । काय सांगों नारायणा ॥ध्रु.॥
जन्मोजन्मींचे सुकृत । तुझे पायीं रमे चित्त ॥2॥
जरी योगाचा अभ्यास । तेव्हां तुझा निजध्यास ॥3॥
तुका ह्मणे भक्त । गोड गाऊं हरिचें गीत॥4॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
Seeing Your form, O God, joy has filled my jiva. This cannot be expressed in words. What can I tell You, O Narayana? Through the merit of many births, my mind delights at Your feet. When the practice of yoga was undertaken, it became the constant contemplation of You. Says Tuka, let us devotees sweetly sing the song of Hari.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
Seeing Your form, O God, joy has come to my life. This cannot be spoken by the tongue. What can I tell, O Narayana? By the good deeds of birth after birth, my mind delights at Your feet. If there was any practice of yoga, it was this: the constant inward thought of You. Tuka says: we devotees will sweetly sing the song of Hari.
What it means
Tukaram traces a clear line from sight to surrender. Beholding God's form fills his very life with a joy too large for speech. He reads his arrival at this moment as the ripening of merit gathered across many lifetimes, so that his mind now rests gladly at God's feet. Then he quietly redefines yoga: not a technique he mastered, but the single unbroken remembrance of God that became his whole practice. The poem ends not in solitary rapture but in company, devotees together turning the joy into song, which is for Tukaram the natural form that such gladness takes.
Ecstasy and Joy
Triumphant happiness: poems written from the far side of the struggle.
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