Doubt in devotion, the restless mind
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
लटिका ऐसा ह्मणतां देव । संदेहसा वाटतसे ॥1॥
ऐसें आलें अनुभवा । मज ही सेवा करिता ॥ध्रु.॥
शून्याकारी बहु मोळा । भेंडोळा हे पवाडे ॥2॥
तुका ह्मणे ताळी नाहीं । एके ठायीं चपळत्वें ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
When one calls God false like this, it feels like something resembling doubt. Such has come to experience, even to me, while doing seva. In the form of the void, very loose: these praises are a bundled skein. Says Tuka, there is no taal. In one place, with quickness.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
When a man calls God false, it feels like something close to doubt. This is what has come to my own experience, even while I am doing my service. In the shape of emptiness there is a great loose tangle; these praises are a bundled skein. Tuka says: there is no steady beat. In one single place the mind keeps darting about.
What it means
Tukaram is honest about a doubt that rises in the middle of his own devotion. Even while serving, the thought comes that God seems unreal, and he admits this feels uncomfortably like real doubt. He sees his own praises as a tangled skein wound around an emptiness, and he cannot hold a steady rhythm: the mind keeps darting even when fixed in one place. The poem names the unsettled inner state that devotion does not automatically cure, and refuses to pretend the restlessness is not there.
Longing and Separation
Cries from the dark night of the soul: remonstrances, complaints, and desperate yearning.
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