Abhanga 2588
Life is a fleeting spectacle of sense-objects; before utpatti-and-pralaya consume what little remains, ask your own mind and run quickly to the refuge of the fearless Lord.
The verse
उखतें आयुष्य जायांचें कळिवर । अवघें वोडंबर विषयांचें ॥१॥
कोणासी हा लागे पुसणें विचार । मनें चि सादर करूं आतां ॥ध्रु.॥
उत्पित्त प्रळय पडिलें दळण । पाकाचें भोजन बीज वाढे ॥२॥
तुका म्हणे जाऊं अभयाच्या ठायां । रिघों देवराया शरण वेगीं ॥३॥
Literal translation
The body's life is melting away; the whole thing is the spectacle of sense-objects. Whom shall we ask for this counsel — let us present the matter to our own mind right now. Birth and dissolution have been grinding; the meal is being cooked, the seed grows. Tukā says: let us go to the place of fearlessness, take refuge in Devarāyā quickly.
What it means
The opening verb ukhtēm (melting, wasting, slipping) is unsparing — Tukārām refuses the polite words for life's progress. Existence is melting like wax, and the whole gorgeous show of sense-objects (viṣayāñchē oḍambar) is — when looked at squarely — a spectacle without substance. The dhrūpada turn is characteristically Tukārām: do not run to a guru or scripture for confirmation, present the case to your own mind — manēm chi sādara karūm ātām. The grinding-image is brutal: utpatti-pralaya (birth-and-dissolution) are a mill, the meal is being cooked, the seed continues to sprout for the next round. The only sane response is to bolt — vēgīm, quickly — to the abhayāchyā ṭhāyā, the place where fear ends. Devarāyā (King-Deva, i.e., Viṭhṭhala) is the only refuge.
For someone today
Run the audit on your own mind, not someone else's: of the things you are spending this melting life on, how much is oḍambar — show? When the answer becomes uncomfortable, do not table it. The grinding continues whether you act or not. Pick the refuge — the practice, the person, the place that genuinely settles your fear — and go there quickly, before the next cycle of cravings reseeds itself.
Where this applies
- Mid-life or late-career inventories of what you have actually been doing
- Coming out of a long stretch of consuming and noticing it left nothing
- The day after a friend's funeral, when the spectacle-quality is briefly visible
- Deciding to actually start the discipline you have been deferring for years