True worship, dead while living
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
वर्णाश्रम करिसी चोख । तरि तूं पावसी उत्तम लोक ॥1॥
तुजला तें नाहीं ठावें । जेणें अंगें चि ब्रह्म व्हावें ॥ध्रु.॥
जरि तूं जालासी पंडित । करिसी शब्दाचें पांडित्य ॥2॥
गासी तान मान बंध । हाव भाव गीत छंद ॥3॥
जाणसील तूं स्वतंत्र । आगमोक्त पूजायंत्र ॥4॥
साधनाच्या ओढी । डोिळयांच्या मोडामोडी ॥5॥
तुका ह्मणे देहीं । संत जाहाले विदेही ॥6॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
If you observe the duties of your caste and stage of life with care, you will reach a good destination. But you do not know the path by which one becomes Brahman itself. If you have become a scholar, you practice only the cleverness of words. You may sing with proper pitch, rhythm, and melody, with feeling and artistry in song. You may consider yourself learned in tantric rituals and worship. Yet all such efforts are merely straining the eyes in search. Says Tuka, the saints who realized the truth became bodiless even while in the body.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
Keep your caste and your stage of life spotless, and you will reach a good world. But you still do not know the way to become Brahman in your very being. You may have become a scholar and play with clever words. You may sing with perfect pitch and time and meter, with feeling and art. You may think yourself a master of tantric rites and the machinery of worship. All of it is only straining the eyes after something. Tuka says: the saints became bodiless while still in the body.
What it means
Tukaram is ranking the whole apparatus of religion below one thing it cannot reach. Faithfully keeping caste and life-stage duties does earn a good destination, and scholarship, beautiful singing, and expert ritual are all genuine accomplishments, but he calls them, one after another, a straining of the eyes that never arrives. What none of them gives is the knowledge by which one becomes Brahman in one's own being, not as a reward elsewhere but here and now. The closing line names the real mark of the saints: while still in the body they had become videhi, bodiless, no longer identified with the flesh. The teaching turns the listener from doing more and knowing more toward the inner death of the body-sense that all the performances bypass.
True Worship
What genuine worship looks like, beyond outward observances and images.
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