Abhanga 772

Even the hardest losses of family can be held as God loosening the ties of attachment, which is what finally lets grief's worry go.

The verse

Literal translation

What it means

A wife-died-child-died-mother-died-deva-removed-māyā-cintā-gone abhang. Deva-removes-māyā-by-removing-the-māyā-objects register. Three claims (with refrain):

1. बाईल-मेली-मुक्त — देवें-माया-सोडविली — Viṭhō-तुझें-माझें-राज्य — दुसर्‍यांचें-काज-नाहीं. Wife-died-mukta-claim. Thebāila(wife) died — becamemukta(free / liberated); thedevaloosened (sōḍavilī) themāyā (the māyā-tie);Viṭhō, ours is therājya(kingdom) together; there's no business of any other. Wife-died-mukta-deva-removed-māyā-tie-no-other-business.

2. पोर-मेलें-बरें — देवें-माया-विरहित-केलें. Child-died-good-claim. Thepōra(child) died —good (barē jālē);the deva made (me) māyā-virahita (free-of-māyā).Child-died-good-deva-māyā-free.

3. माता-मेली-मज-देखतां — Tuka: हरली-चिंता. Mother-died-cintā-gone-claim. Themātā(mother) died as I watched; Tuka says:cintā(worry, anxiety) has gone (haralī). Mother-died-cintā-gone.

This is one of the most-shocking abhangs in the corpus. The reading is not literal-celebration of family-death; rather, it expresses the bhakta-extreme-detachment-stance: when māyā-objects (wife, child, mother — the three most-binding māyā-ties) are removed, the māyā itself is removed; only Viṭhō and I remain in the rājya. Each death is reframed as deva's loosening-of-māyā. (This may also reflect Tukaram's biographical-context: he reportedly lost his first-wife and child to the famine of 1629; the abhang may be retrospective-acceptance of those losses as deva-removing-māyā-bonds.)

[T]

For someone today

This is one of Tukaram's most unsettling verses, and it is not a celebration of death. He describes losing his wife, his child, and watching his mother die, and each time he names the loss as God loosening a bond of maya, the attachment that ties a person to the world. What remains, he says, is only him and Vitthal, nothing else to manage or worry about. Read this not as advice to want your family to die, but as a picture of the outer edge of surrender: even the losses you did not choose can be held as God's doing rather than pure catastrophe, and that reframing is what lets the worry finally go.

मराठी: तुकारामांची ही अभंगरचना अतिशय धक्कादायक आहे, पण ती मृत्यूचा उत्सव साजरा करणारी नाही. पत्नी, मूल आणि आई यांच्या मृत्यूचे वर्णन करताना ते प्रत्येक वेळी सांगतात की देवाने माया, म्हणजे जगाशी बांधणारी आसक्ती, सोडवली आहे. उरतं ते फक्त विठोबा आणि मी, बाकी कशाचीही चिंता नाही. हे कुटुंबाच्या मृत्यूची इच्छा करण्याचा सल्ला नाही, तर शरणागतीच्या टोकाचे चित्र आहे — न निवडलेले नुकसानही देवाची कृती मानता येते, आणि हीच जाणीव मनातली चिंता शेवटी नाहीशी करते.

Where this applies

• Wife —māyā loosened. Death-as-untying.
• Child —māyā-virahita. Death-as-untying.
• Mother —cintā gone. Death-as-untying.

Related verses

• 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
• Abhanga 4555 — A true encounter with God proves that plain, steady closeness to him outweighs any amount