संत साहित्य · Tukārām · Abhanga 16 of 4582

Abhanga 16

English: We will enjoy all happiness at all times; we have cut the net of attachment-bonds.

When you find yourself in a friendship, practice, or relationship that doesn't go anywhere by social metrics — and you have to decide whether that is failure or whether it is the actual thing

When you're tempted to make a meaningful relationship serve some secondary purpose (networking, advancement, social standing) — and you have to ask whether that conversion is preserving the love or destroying it

When a spiritual practice has stopped producing measurable progress and you are tempted to drop it — and you have to ask whether the absence of progress IS the practice

The verse

सर्व सुख आम्ही भोगूं सर्व काळ । तोडियेलें जाळ मोहपाश ॥१॥ याचसाठी सांडियेले भरतार । रातलों या परपुरुषाशीं ॥२॥ तुका म्हणे आतां गर्भ नये धरूं । औषध जें करूं फळ नव्हे ॥३॥

(Source: transliteral.org Sant Tukaram Gatha, abhang 16. Tenth in the sustained gopī-arc 0007-0020+.)

Literal translation

English: We will enjoy all happiness at all times; we have cut the net of attachment-bonds. For this very reason we abandoned the lawful husband — we have become absorbed in this Other-Man. Tuka says: now we will not bear his seed; the medicine we use does not let any fruit come.

मराठी (आधुनिक): सर्व काळ आम्ही सर्व सुख भोगू; मोहाचं जाळं तोडून टाकलं. याचसाठीच आम्ही भरतार सोडला; या परपुरुषात बुडून गेलो आहोत. तुकाराम म्हणतात — आता गर्भ धरायचा नाही; जे औषध आम्ही घेतो त्याने फळ धरत नाही.

Word-by-word gloss

Marathi	Meaning
सर्व सुख आम्ही भोगूं सर्व काळ	"we will enjoy all happiness at all times"
तोडियेलें जाळ मोहपाश	"we have cut the net of attachment-bondage" (जाळ = net; मोहपाश = the snare of moha / delusional attachment)
याचसाठी सांडियेले भरतार	"for this very reason we abandoned the (lawful) husband" (भरतार = husband — the same word that opens 0008's vyabhicāra-bhakti)
रातलों या परपुरुषाशीं	"we have become absorbed in this Other-Man" (परपुरुष = literally "the other male" — but in Vedantic / bhakti vocabulary, Param-Purusha, the Supreme Person; the double sense is intentional and theologically dense)
आतां गर्भ नये धरूं	"now we will not let the womb hold (a child)"
औषध जें करूं फळ नव्हे	"the medicine we use does not let fruit come" (औषध = medicine; फळ = fruit, also "outcome / result")

What it means

The third verse is the radical line. Tukaram, in feminine voice, says: we will use medicine so no fruit comes from this union. The literal surface is contraception in the gopī's adultery; the theological content is far more pointed. Bhakti's love is being declared deliberately fruitless in worldly terms. The love produces no offspring, no inherited spiritual capital, no transferable credit, no countable result. फळ नव्हे — no fruit. [T] [Tradition]

The double sense of परपुरुष (Other-Man / Supreme Person) is doing key work. In erotic surface-reading, परपुरुष is the lover-not-her-husband, scandalous. In Vedantic depth-reading, Param-Purusha is the Supreme Self of Sankhya-Vedanta cosmology. The same word holds both registers. The bhakta who "abandoned the lawful husband for the Other-Man" has, in the deeper register, abandoned the conventional self for the Supreme Self. [Tradition]

The "medicine" that prevents fruit is the abhang's most theologically dense detail. Why would the speaker actively refuse the fruit of her devotion? Because fruit would convert love into means. If the love produces something countable, the count is what gets measured; the love is then valued for what it produces, not for itself. The contraceptive metaphor is the bhakta's refusal of that conversion. The love is for itself. The love is what is happening. There is no outcome it is being held to. [T]

This is bhakti's most uncomfortable claim. Most religion offers spiritual fruit — merit, liberation, heaven, transformation, results. Tukaram's gopī-speaker is refusing fruit. Not because she fails to receive it, but because she has chosen — by ओष्ठ, by deliberate medicine — not to bear it. The love is sterile in worldly terms, and the sterility is the protection. [T]

For someone today

English: This abhang names a kind of love modern productivity culture has almost no vocabulary for. We are trained to ask of every relationship, every practice, every commitment: what is this producing? where is it going? what's the outcome? Tukaram's gopī-speaker, in this verse, is not just allowing her love to produce nothing — she is actively choosing that it produce nothing, by means of औषध (medicine, technique, deliberate refusal). The love is defended against productivity. The love is not even allowed to fall into the role of being-the-cause-of-something-else.

This sounds nihilistic at first reading. It is the opposite. Tukaram's claim is that love which is held to its outcomes ceases to be love and becomes investment. The friendship that exists to network, the practice that exists to optimize, the marriage that exists to produce children, the spiritual life that exists to attain something — each of these has, by being held to a fruit, lost the very thing it was. The contraceptive metaphor is the protection. We will not let this bear fruit, she says, because the fruit was never what this was for.

The hardest part to apply: most modern life cannot tolerate non-fruit-bearing things. Friendships that do not advance careers feel suspect. Practices that do not produce measurable progress feel like failure. Time spent without outcome feels wasted. Tukaram is suggesting that the love-which-is-actually-love is precisely the love that has been protected from outcome-pressure. If you have a relationship, a practice, a love that is not going anywhere — the question is not how to make it productive. The question is whether you have stumbled onto the thing the abhang is naming, and whether you are willing to deliberately protect its fruitlessness so that the love itself can survive.

मराठी: ही ओवी अशा एका प्रेमाबद्दल आहे ज्यासाठी आधुनिक उत्पादकता-संस्कृतीकडे फारसे शब्द नाहीत. आपल्याला प्रत्येक नातं, प्रत्येक साधना, प्रत्येक commitment ला विचारायला शिकवलं आहे: हे काय उत्पन्न करतंय? कुठे जातंय? परिणाम काय? तुकारामांची गोपी-वक्ती या ओवीत प्रेमाला फक्त निष्फळ राहू देत नाही — ती सक्रियपणे फळ-नकार निवडते, औषधाद्वारे (तंत्र, हेतुपूर्वक नकार). प्रेम उत्पादकतेपासून संरक्षित आहे. प्रेमाला काही-तरी-च्या-कारणाची-भूमिका घेऊ दिलं जात नाहीच.

पहिल्या वाचनात हे शून्यवादी वाटतं. खरंतर उलट. तुकारामांचा दावा आहे — जे प्रेम परिणामांना धरून ठेवलं जातं ते प्रेम राहत नाही, ते गुंतवणूक होतं. नेटवर्क बनवायला असलेली मैत्री, optimize करायला असलेली साधना, मुलं देण्यासाठी असलेलं लग्न, काहीतरी मिळवायला असलेलं आध्यात्मिक जीवन — प्रत्येकाला फळाला बांधल्यामुळे ते स्वतःच गमावलंय. गर्भ-निरोधक रूपक संरक्षण आहे. आम्ही याला फळ धरू देणार नाही, ती म्हणते, कारण फळ हे या प्रेमाचं उद्दिष्ट कधीच नव्हतं.

लागू करायला सर्वात कठीण: बहुतेक आधुनिक जीवन निष्फळ गोष्टी सहन करू शकत नाही. जी मैत्री करिअर पुढे नेत नाही ती संशयास्पद वाटते. जी साधना मोजता-येणारी प्रगती देत नाही ती अपयश वाटते. जो वेळ परिणामाशिवाय गेला तो वाया गेला वाटतं. तुकाराम सूचित करत आहेत की खरोखर प्रेम-असलेलं प्रेम तेच आहे ज्याला परिणाम-दबावापासून संरक्षण मिळालंय. तुम्हाला असं नातं, साधना, प्रेम सापडलंय जे कुठे जात नाही — तर प्रश्न हा नाही की त्याला उत्पादक कसं बनवावं. प्रश्न आहे की तुम्ही चुकून या ओवीच्या गोष्टीवर पडलात का, आणि हेतुपूर्वक त्याची निष्फळता संरक्षित करायला तयार आहात का — जेणेकरून प्रेमच टिकू शकेल.

Where this applies

When you find yourself in a friendship, practice, or relationship that doesn't go anywhere by social metrics. Tukaram's diagnostic: this might be the actual thing. The "going somewhere" requirement is what kills the form of love you might have stumbled onto. Protect the not-going-anywhere.
When you're tempted to make a meaningful relationship serve some secondary purpose. The conversion is the trap. Once a friendship becomes "useful," it has become a different thing. The medicine in this verse is the protection against that conversion.
When a spiritual practice has stopped producing measurable progress and you are tempted to drop it. Tukaram's most uncomfortable claim: the absence of measurable progress may be the practice's most successful state. The fruit-less practice is the practice that has been protected from being a means.