Abhanga 4

Beauty seen and not yet possessed is the position devotion is built from. The longing is not the obstacle; it is the practice.

The verse

Literal translation

What it means

This abhang works by an unmistakable shift Tukaram has made: he speaks in feminine voice — addressing other women (बाइयानो, व्हा गे एकीसवा) and asking them to stand together with him in his unbearable longing. The position is gopī-bhāva — the affective stance of the cowherd women of Vrindavan whose love for Krishna was so total that they abandoned husbands, families, social respectability. Tukaram is putting himself inside this stance. [T] [Tradition]

The poem accumulates beauty almost unbearably — verse after verse of detail (musk forehead-mark, sandalwood paste, garland, crown, earrings, gold-bordered garment, dark-cloud color) — and the cumulation IS the move. Each detail makes the speaker's longing more acute. By verse 4, the speaker's soul has run out of patience: "जीवा धीर नाहीं." The poem does not resolve the longing; the poem inhabits it. [T]

The phrase "सुखाचें ओतलें सकळ ही" — all of him is poured out of joy itself — is one of Tukaram's most extraordinary images. The deity is described not as causing joy but as cast from joy, the way a metal idol is cast from molten metal. The substance of God, in this phrase, is happiness itself. Looking at God is looking into the molten state from which joy comes. [T]

The closing — "जीवा धीर नाहीं" — is theologically important. Tukaram does not promise that the longing will end, will be rewarded, will be transformed. He simply names it: I have run out of patience. The honesty of unfulfilled longing IS the bhakti, in this register. There is no fix, only the inhabiting.

The gopī-bhāva — being-in-the-position-of-the-cowherd-woman — is one of bhakti's most distinctive moves. It originates in Krishnaite devotion, where the gopīs of Vrindavan are taken as the model devotees because their love was unauthorized, scandalous, total, and unfulfilled. To put oneself in gopī-position is to embrace devotion as illicit-feeling, restless, marked by viraha (separation-longing). Male sant-poets across India routinely take this voice — in the warkari tradition, in Mira Bai, in the south Indian Alvars. It is theologically gender-fluid in a way much modern religion is not. [Tradition]

For Tukaram (a married householder, male, with a documented difficult marriage to Jijai), to inhabit the gopī-voice is not metaphor only. It is an admission that the form of the deepest love available to him resembles the gopī's love more than it resembles a respectable husband's love. The married householder identity does not contain the longing the deity stirs; the gopī-voice does. [Tradition]

The choice of details — musk, sandalwood, Vaijayantī garland, dark-cloud color — locates this Krishna firmly in the Vrindavan iconography rather than the Pandharpur Vitthal iconography. The opening abhangs of the Gatha are sliding between local-Pandharpur Vitthal (0001-0003) and pan-Indian Krishna (0004 here) freely; for Tukaram the two are not really separate.

For someone today

English: Modern life is allergic to unfulfilled longing. We treat it as a problem to fix — find another partner, distract yourself, replace the want, medicate it, decide it was never important. Tukaram, in this abhang, does the opposite. He stays inside the longing, names every beautiful detail of what he cannot have, calls other people to stand with him, and admits at the end that his soul has no patience left. None of that gets him what he wants. The longing is not solved. But the abhang exists, and the abhang is itself an act of devotion — the longing has been inhabited, not abandoned. So when you are inside an unfulfilled wanting — for a person, a past, a clear answer from God — Tukaram's question is not "how do I fix this?" but "can I stay inside this with my whole heart, name what I want in detail, and let the wanting itself be the practice?" The practice is not a path to the fulfillment. The practice IS what wanting-with-the-whole-heart looks like. The poems we have from Tukaram are wanting-poems. They are also enlightenment-poems. He did not separate them.

मराठी: आधुनिक जग अपूर्ण तळमळ सहन करत नाही — आपण त्याला सोडवायची समस्या मानतो: दुसरा जोडीदार शोध, स्वतःला दुसरीकडे गुंतव, ती इच्छा बदल, औषध घे, ते महत्त्वाचंच नव्हतं असं ठरव. तुकाराम याच ओवीत अगदी उलट करतात. ते तळमळीच्या आत राहतात, ज्या व्यक्तीची ओढ आहे तिच्या प्रत्येक सुंदर तपशिलाचं नाव घेतात, इतर बायांना त्यांच्याबरोबर उभं राहायला हाक मारतात, आणि शेवटी कबूल करतात — माझ्या जीवाला आता धीर राहिला नाही. यातून त्यांना मागायचं ते मिळत नाही. तळमळ सुटत नाही. पण ओवी आहे — आणि ही ओवी स्वतःच भक्तीचं कृत्य आहे. तळमळ सोडलेली नाही, तळमळ पूर्ण मनाने राहिलेली आहे. म्हणून तुम्ही जेव्हा अपूर्ण इच्छेच्या आत असता — एखाद्या माणसासाठी, भूतकाळासाठी, देवाकडून स्पष्ट उत्तरासाठी — तेव्हा तुकाराम विचारत नाहीत "हे कसं सोडवायचं?" — ते विचारतात "मी या आत संपूर्ण मनाने राहू शकेन का? जे हवंय त्याचं तपशीलवार नाव घेऊ शकेन का? आणि ही तळमळच सरावाला बनवू शकेन का?" सराव म्हणजे फलप्राप्तीचा रस्ता नाही. सराव म्हणजेच संपूर्ण मनाने इच्छिणं असं काय असतं याचं नाव. तुकारामांच्या ज्या ओव्या आपल्याकडे आहेत त्या इच्छेच्या ओव्या आहेत. त्याच ज्ञानाच्या ओव्याही आहेत. त्यांनी त्यांना वेगळं केलं नाही.

Where this applies

• When someone or something you love is just out of reach — a person, a place, a past version of life — and the ache of wanting them is keeping you raw. The abhang's bare admission — जीवा धीर नाहीं, my soul has no patience — is the permission slip you may need to stop pretending you're fine. Tukaram's example is that the patience-loss can itself be a verse, can itself be addressed to the divine, can itself be a form of love. The ache does not need to be quieted to count as devotion.

• When you're tempted to fix longing (with another person, a substitute, distraction) and you have to ask whether longing itself is asking to be inhabited rather than solved. Watch what Tukaram does NOT do. He does not name a substitute. He does not propose a path forward. He does not set goals. He stands inside the longing and accumulates beautiful detail. If the longing in your life is something you keep trying to fix and the fixes keep failing, Tukaram is suggesting a different relation: live in it, attend to its details, let it form you.

• When you find yourself in the position of wanting God / ultimate-meaning / coherence and you cannot have it on demand. This is the gopī-position translated. The mystical traditions across cultures agree on something: the wanting comes before the having, and most of the spiritual life takes place inside the wanting. If you are wanting the divine and not finding it — Tukaram says: that wanting itself is gopī-voice, is bhakti, is real. You are not failing the practice. The wanting is the practice.

Related verses

• Abhanga 5 — When you have built an image of what you want, ask for it visibly. Quiet asking lets the a
• Abhanga 7 — If devotion is real, the shame the world will throw at you is not a problem to solve. It i
• Abhanga 8 — When your sanctioned life cannot feed what is hungriest in you, the move toward what actua
• Abhanga 9 — English: This abhang is the verse for the moment after a real life-direction choice. Most