Abhanga 577

Real devotion becomes so fused with who you are that it cannot be separated out, the way sunlight cannot be pulled apart from the sun or sweetness from sugar.

The verse

Literal translation

What it means

A bhakta-deva-merger-three-images abhang. Three classical inseparability-images. Three claims:

1. रवि रश्मीकळा — नये काढितां निराळा — तैसा आम्हां जाला भाव — अंगीं जडोनि ठेला देव — ravi-raśmī — can't draw separate — thus — bhāva — anga jaḍōnī ṭhēlā deva. The opening-sun-and-rays-image: theravi(sun) and itsraśmī(rays) — cannot be drawn out (niyāḷē) as separate; thus ourbhāva(state, stance) has become; the deva hasjaḍōnī(stuck-to, become-fixed-on) theanga(body) andṭhēlā(remained, stayed). Bhakta-and-deva-inseparable-like-sun-and-rays; deva-stuck-to-the-body.

2. गोडी साकरेपासुनी — कैसी निवडती दोन्ही — gōḍī — sākara — how separated — both? The sugar-sweetness-image: gōḍī (sweetness) from sākara (sugar);how can the two be nivaḍatī (separated)?Sweetness-and-sugar-inseparable.Bhakta-and-deva-inseparable.

3. तुका म्हणे नाद उठी — विरोनि जाय नभा पोटीं — Tuka says: nāda rises — vapors — nabhā-pōṭīm. The closing-sound-and-sky-image: Tuka says: thenāda(sound, vibration) rises; (it)virōnī(vapors, dissolves) and goes into thenabhā-pōṭīm(sky-belly = the sky's interior). Sound-arises-and-dissolves-back-into-sky. Bhakta-arises-from-and-dissolves-into-the-deva-as-sky. (The nāda-nabha image: sound is from-sky and to-sky; just as the bhakta is from-the-deva and to-the-deva.)

[T]

For someone today

Tukaram offers three simple pictures to describe a love that has become inseparable from who he is. You cannot pull the sun apart from its rays, and you cannot separate sweetness from the sugar that carries it, because the two were never really two things. That is what devotion becomes when it is real: God is not something added onto you from outside, but something that has fused into your very being, the way a sound rises into the sky and dissolves back into it, coming from the same source it returns to.

मराठी: तुकाराम अशी अभेद्य झालेली भक्ती समजावण्यासाठी तीन साध्या प्रतिमा देतात. सूर्य आणि त्याची किरणं वेगळी करता येत नाहीत, आणि साखरेतली गोडी साखरेपासून वेगळी करता येत नाही, कारण ती दोन्ही कधीच खरोखर वेगळी नव्हती. खरी भक्ती अशीच असते: देव तुमच्यात बाहेरून जोडलेली गोष्ट नसतो, तर तुमच्या अस्तित्वातच रुजलेला असतो, जसा एखादा नाद आकाशात उठतो आणि पुन्हा त्याच आकाशात विरून जातो, जिथून तो आला तिथेच परत जातो.

Where this applies

• Sun-and-rays. Inseparable.
• Body-stuck deva. Permanent.
• Sugar-sweetness. Property-substance.
• Nāda-sky. Origin-end.

Related verses

• Abhanga 2467 — What looks like your whole world, like a fig to the insect living inside it, is only a tin
• Abhanga 4481 — Tukaram promises that sincerely calling on the Lord's name, knowingly or unknowingly, with
• Abhanga 4482 — Tukaram teaches that no ritual equals sincerely speaking the Lord's name, that self-center
• Abhanga 4497 — Tukaram describes a life so soaked in devotion that Krishna's presence fills every ordinar