Worldly life, a grain of pleasure
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
सुख पाहतां जवापाडें । दुःख पर्वता एवढें ॥१॥
धरीं धरीं आठवण । मानीं संताचें वचन ॥ध्रु.॥
नेलें रात्रीनें तें अर्धें । बाळपण जराव्याधें ॥२॥
तुका म्हणे पुढा । घाणा जुंती जसी मूढा ॥३॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
Pleasure is the size of a barley grain; suffering is as vast as a mountain. Hold this remembrance firmly; trust the word of the saints. Half of life is stolen by the night; childhood and old-age-disease claim the rest. Says Tuka, ahead, the fool is yoked to the oil-press and driven round and round.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
Weigh it honestly: the pleasure is the size of a barley grain, the suffering as big as a mountain. Hold this firmly in memory; trust what the saints have told you. Half of your life is carried off by the night and sleep, and childhood at one end and old age and sickness at the other take most of the rest. Tuka says: and ahead, the fool is yoked like an ox to the oil-press, driven round and round.
What it means
Tukaram does the arithmetic of a human life and finds the balance grim. Set against a mountain of suffering, the pleasure amounts to a single barley grain. And the time itself is mostly spent before you notice: half lost to sleep, the rest eaten by helpless childhood and by the decay of age and illness. What is left, for the person who never wakes up, is the oil-press: the ox walking in endless circles, blindfolded, going nowhere. He lays it out this starkly so the listener will value the little waking time he has and turn it toward God.
Worldly Life
The perplexities of action, karma, and navigating life in the world.
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