Abhanga 1261

It is not emptiness or fullness alone that causes suffering, but the constant swinging between them, so ask to be accompanied through that instability rather than left alone in it.

The verse

Literal translation

What it means

The seer-of-both abhang. Tuka has experienced vōsa (empty / desolate / abandoned states) and vasatī (inhabited / occupied states) — and is now the dēkhaṇā (witnessing eye) of both. The mind no longer moves māgē-puḍhē (back-or-forward) — neither remembering past pleasure nor anticipating future relief.

The crucial insight: cālī duḥkha pāvī — the movement-between brings duḥkha. Not vōsa, not vasatī — but the transition, the cālī (going from one to the other), is where suffering lives. To rest in either pure-vōsa or pure-vasatī would be enough; the alternation is the wound.

The closing prayer is small and exact: ghē'ūm Devā — savē karūnī bōḷāvā — take, Deva — make-companion-and-call. Don't leave me oscillating between vōsa and vasatī alone; go-with-me (savē = with-companion) and call me along.

[T]

For someone today

From my own bodily experience, I have come to know what is bad and what is good. I have become the witness of both — my mind no longer swings back to the past or forward toward the future. I know emptiness and I know fullness, both well, but it is the constant movement between them that brings real suffering. Tuka says: take me, God — walk with me as my companion, and call me along.

मराठी: माझ्या स्वतःच्या अनुभवातून मला बरे-वाईट काय आहे हे कळले आहे. मी दोन्हींचा साक्षी झालो आहे — माझे मन आता मागे किंवा पुढे धावत नाही. रितेपण आणि भरलेपण, दोन्ही मला ठाऊक आहेत, पण या दोघांमधली सतत होणारी हेलकावेगिरीच खरे दुःख देते. तुका म्हणतात, देवा, मला घे — माझा सोबती हो, आणि मला बरोबर घेऊन हाक मार.

Where this applies

• When you swing between feeling emotionally full and feeling completely empty and it is the swinging itself that exhausts you
• When you have lived through enough highs and lows that you can finally just witness them instead of being thrown by either
• When you are caught comparing your current state to a better past or a hoped-for future instead of just being present
• When you feel you need companionship to get through an unsteady stretch of life rather than facing it entirely alone

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