Nondual union, no seam to cut
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
रवि रश्मीकळा । नये काढितां निराळा ॥१॥
तैसा आम्हां जाला भाव । अंगीं जडोनि ठेला देव ॥ध्रु.॥
गोडी साकरेपासुनी । कैसी निवडती दोन्ही ॥२॥
तुका म्हणे नाद उठी । विरोनि जाय नभा पोटीं ॥३॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
The rays cannot be separated from the sun. In the same way, God has become fused with my very being. How can sweetness be divided from sugar? Says Tuka, a sound arises and then dissolves back into the belly of the sky.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
You cannot pull the rays away from the sun and set them apart. That is what my devotion has become: God has fastened himself to me and stays. How would you separate the sweetness from the sugar? They are not two things. Tuka says: a sound rises, and then it dissolves back into the belly of the sky.
What it means
Tukaram is describing what his bhakti has turned into: not worship across a gap, but union with no gap left. His three images all name the same thing, a quality that cannot be detached from its substance: rays from the sun, sweetness from sugar, sound from the open sky it rises in and sinks back into. God has become inseparable from his very being. The point is that at this depth the question of how to worship dissolves, because the worshipper and the worshipped are no longer two.
The Necessity of Experience
Why direct experience of God, not mere learning, is the only path.
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