Devotion, longing kept alive
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
करावें चिंतन । तें चि बरें न भेटून ॥1॥
बरवा अंगीं राहे भाव । तो गे तो चि जाणा देव ॥ध्रु.॥
दर्शणाची उरी । अवस्था चि अंग धरी ॥2॥
तुका ह्मणे मन । तेथें सकळ कारण ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
It is better to contemplate God without meeting Him in person, for then the feeling remains fresh and alive within. That very feeling is God Himself. When yearning for His sight persists, it takes on a form of its own. Says Tuka, in the end, everything depends upon the mind.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
It is better to contemplate God and not meet him in person. Then the feeling stays fresh inside. That very feeling is God himself. When the longing for his sight keeps burning, it takes on a body of its own. Tuka says: it is the mind. Everything turns on that.
What it means
Tukaram makes a strange, daring claim: better not to meet God face to face. A finished, satisfied meeting would let the feeling cool, but unmet longing stays alive and fresh, and he says that living feeling is itself God. When the ache to see him keeps burning, the yearning grows so intense it almost takes on its own form. The point is that devotion is not a transaction completed by an encounter; it is an inner state. In the end everything depends on the mind, where the feeling lives.
Devotion to Vitthal
Poems of praise, invocation, and intimate address to Lord Vitthal at Pandharpur.
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