Abhanga 3
Ask for love itself, not for the benefits of love. The benefits look small once love is present; the absence of love is what makes other prizes look big.
The verse
सदा माझे डोळे जडो तुझे मूर्ती । रखुमाईच्या पती सोयरिया ॥१॥ गोड तुझें रूप गोड तुझें नाम । देईं मज प्रेम सर्व काळ ॥ध्रु.॥ विठो माउलिये हा चि वर देईं । संचरोनि राहीं हृदयामाजी ॥२॥ तुका म्हणे कांहीं न मागे आणीक । तुझे पायीं सुख सर्व आहे ॥३॥
(Source: transliteral.org Sant Tukaram Gatha, abhang 3. Verified canonical text from sources/marathi/0003.txt.)
Literal translation
English: Let my eyes be fixed always on your form, O kinsman, husband of Rukmini. Sweet is your form, sweet is your name — give me, at all times, love. O Vitthal-Mother, grant me only this boon: enter my heart and dwell there. Tuka says: I ask for nothing else — all happiness is at your feet.
मराठी (आधुनिक): हे रखुमाईच्या पती, माझ्या आप्ता — माझे डोळे सतत तुझ्या मूर्तीवर खिळून राहोत. तुझं रूप गोड, तुझं नाव गोड — मला सर्व काळ प्रेम दे. हे विठ्ठल-माउली, हाच एक वर दे — माझ्या हृदयात येऊन राहा. तुकाराम म्हणतात — मी आणखी काहीही मागत नाही, सर्व सुख तुझ्याच पायांशी आहे.
Word-by-word gloss
| Marathi | Meaning |
|---|---|
| सदा माझे डोळे जडो | "Let my eyes always be fixed" (जडो = let-be-attached) |
| तुझे मूर्ती | on your form/image |
| रखुमाईच्या पती सोयरिया | "O husband of Rukhumai (Rukmini), kinsman" — सोयरा = relative, friend, kin |
| गोड तुझें रूप | sweet is your form |
| गोड तुझें नाम | sweet is your name |
| देईं मज प्रेम | give me love (प्रेम / prema in bhakti = the highest devotion) |
| सर्व काळ | at all times |
| विठो माउलिये | "Vitthal Mother" (माउली = mother — Vitthal addressed as mother) |
| हा चि वर देईं | "give me this very boon" |
| संचरोनि राहीं हृदयामाजी | "enter and dwell in my heart" |
| कांहीं न मागे आणीक | "I am not asking for anything else" |
| तुझे पायीं सुख सर्व आहे | "all happiness is at your feet" |
What it means
This abhang continues the opening sequence of the Gatha (0001 = let attention settle, 0002 = on this form, 0003 = and let it become indwelling) and adds a crucial new request: prema. Tukaram is not asking for visions, miracles, ritual success, or even moral improvement. He is asking for the affective state of being-in-love-with-God to be granted, "सर्व काळ" — at all times. This is theologically dense in its compactness: prema is itself the goal, not a side-benefit of the goal. [T]
Three vocatives stack up across the four verses, and the order matters. Verse 1: "रखुमाईच्या पती सोयरिया" — O husband of Rukmini, kinsman. Verse 2: "विठो माउलिये" — O Vitthal-Mother. The deity is addressed first as cosmic husband (relational, formal), then as familiar relative (सोयरा — closer), then as mother (माउली — closest, fully internal). The progression from external relation to internal indwelling tracks the shift Tukaram is asking for: gaze (verse 1) → love (refrain) → indwelling (verse 2). The deity becomes more interior with each verse. [T] [Tradition]
The closing — "तुझे पायीं सुख सर्व आहे" — all happiness is at your feet — closes the loop with the Gatha's opening abhang: 0001 prayed that attention settle on Vitthal's even feet; 0003 declares that those same feet are where all happiness already is. The abhangs are constructing a tight conceptual sequence.
The address "विठो माउलिये" — Vitthal-Mother — is one of the most distinctive features of the warkari tradition. Vitthal is iconographically male (husband of Rukmini) but devotionally addressed as mother. The maternal address signals the kind of relationship the bhakta wants: not formal worship, but the absolute non-hierarchical safety of a child with their mother. A child does not pray for things from their mother; the child simply needs the mother to be present. [Tradition]
"प्रेम" in bhakti technical vocabulary is not romantic feeling but the highest stage of devotion — past mere faith, past devotion-as-practice, into devotion-as-state-of-being. The classical Vaishnava systematics (in Rupa Goswami and others) place prema at the top of a hierarchy of bhāvas. Tukaram is asking for the highest form, "सर्व काळ" — at all times, not just in moments of practice. [Tradition]
For someone today
English: Notice what Tukaram is actually asking for. Not success, not health, not safety, not even wisdom — love itself, at all times. This is a strange request to a modern ear. We're trained to ask for outcomes; Tukaram is asking for the affective state that makes outcomes feel less weighty. He has skipped a level. The reason becomes clear in the closing verse: all happiness is at your feet. If love is present, the prizes become small. If love is absent, the absence is what makes the prizes look big. So when you find yourself praying — for a result, an outcome, a fix to something — Tukaram's quiet challenge is to ask whether the deeper request underneath is just to feel love at all times. The outcome-prayer is often a placeholder for that prayer. Try asking the deeper one directly. The strange thing is what happens to your relationship to the outcome when you do.
मराठी: तुकाराम काय मागत आहेत हे लक्षात घ्या. यश नाही, आरोग्य नाही, सुरक्षितता नाही, अगदी ज्ञान नाही — सर्व काळ प्रेमच. आजच्या कानाला हे विचित्र वाटतं. आपल्याला यशासाठी, परिणामांसाठी मागायला शिकवलं आहे; तुकाराम जे मागतायत तो असा भाव आहे जो परिणामांचं ओझं हलकं करतो. ते एक पातळी सोडून पुढे गेले आहेत. कारण शेवटच्या ओवीत स्पष्ट होतं: सर्व सुख तुझ्या पायांशी आहे. प्रेम असेल तर बाकीची बक्षिसं छोटी वाटतात. प्रेम नसेल तर तीच बक्षिसं मोठी दिसू लागतात. म्हणून जेव्हा तुम्ही प्रार्थना करत असता — एखाद्या परिणामासाठी, यशासाठी, उपचारासाठी — तेव्हा तुकाराम विचारतात: त्या मागणीच्या तळाशी खरी मागणी ही नाही का, की नेहमी प्रेम जाणवो? परिणामाची प्रार्थना ही बहुतेक वेळा त्या खोल मागणीचा बदल असते. खोल मागणी थेट करून पाहा. आणि जे आश्चर्य घडतं ते परिणामाशी असलेल्या तुमच्या नात्यात घडतं.
Where this applies
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When you're tempted to pray for outcomes and you have to choose whether to ask for the outcome or for the love that would make outcome-anxiety quieter. Tukaram skips outcome-prayers entirely and asks for prema. He is not saying outcome-prayer is wrong; he is saying it usually misnames what you actually want. What you usually want is to feel held while waiting for the outcome. That is a prema-prayer, not an outcome-prayer.
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When you've been doing a name-practice (japa, mantra, prayer) for years and you wonder if it's doing anything. Verse 1's refrain — "गोड तुझें रूप, गोड तुझें नाम, देईं मज प्रेम सर्व काळ" — is the answer to that wondering. The name-practice is not for results; it is the slow process by which the form and the name become sweet to you. If after years the form and name feel sweet in some quiet way that wasn't there before, the practice has done its work. That sweetness IS the result.
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When you have to give a child or a younger person advice about what to want spiritually — and your instinct is to say 'be a good person' but the abhang asks something more specific. Tukaram's answer is not "be good" but "ask for love itself, at all times." The good person follows from being-in-love-with-God; without that, "being good" becomes a performance with no fuel. The advice the abhang offers is to teach the younger person what to want, not what to do. Wanting prema is the most useful thing you can teach them to want.