Abhanga 2611
Now there is nothing else — even the forest is empty; I have fallen into the placeless. I watch only your path; all hope is undone. The trail of previous-things broke; renunciation came from distaste. Tukā: O Karuṇākara, you are my heart's kinsman.
The verse
आतां दुसरें नाहीं वनीं । निरांजनी पडिलों ॥१॥
तुमची च पाहें वास । अवघी आस निरसली ॥ध्रु.॥
मागिलांचा मोडला माग । घडला त्याग अरुची ॥२॥
तुका म्हणे करुणाकरा । तूं सोयरा जीवींचा ॥३॥
Literal translation
Now there is nothing else in the forest; I have fallen into the nirāñjanī (the placeless / the no-one-place). I watch only your path; all hope is undone. The trail of previous-things has broken; renunciation came about — from distaste. Tukā says: O Karuṇākara, you are the heart's kinsman.
What it means
Nirāñjanī is one of Tukārām's distinctive words — it can mean the place-without-people, the placeless, the without-collyrium — generally, the stripped-bare landscape with no human or sensory furniture. Ātām dusarēm nāhīm vanīm — nirāñjanī paḍilōm — now nothing else in the forest; I have fallen into the placeless. Even the forest (the traditional retreat) is no longer offering choices; one has fallen past retreat into a landscape into no-landscape.
In this stripped state, the bhakta says: tumacī chi pāhē vāsa — avaghī āsa nirasalī — I watch only your path; all hope is undone (nirasalī = undone, dissolved, made flavorless). The watching is not theatrical patience; it is what is left when other hopes have actually gone flat.
The second verse confesses the route by which one arrived: māgilāñchā mōḍalā māga — ghaḍalā tyāga aruchī — the trail (māga) of previous-things broke; renunciation (tyāga) came about — from distaste (aruchī). This is theologically honest. Many renunciations in the textbook are from vairāgya — from cultivated detachment. Tukārām confesses: my renunciation came from aruchī — from distaste — not from spiritual achievement. The previous things became flavorless, and what was called renunciation followed.
The close is the relational anchor: Karuṇākara — tūm sōyarā jīvīñchā — O Karuṇākara (compassion-doer), you are the kinsman (sōyarā) of the heart's life. Sōyarā — the warmest possible kinship-word — is offered to the only being left in the nirāñjanī landscape.
For someone today
There are arrivals at nothing-else-left that don't come by virtue but by depletion — the previous trails broke, the previous flavors went flat. Tukārām does not pretend otherwise. The bhakti consolation in this state is that even when one's renunciation is from aruchī — distaste-route, not vairāgya-route — there is still a sōyarā (kinsman) one can address as Karuṇākara. You can name that one as the heart's relative in a landscape with no other furniture. The verse does not require the noble route to give you the consolation.
Where this applies
- Honest post-burnout state where the previous options have actually gone flat
- The nirāñjanī landscape after major losses or breakdowns
- Renunciation by depletion rather than by achievement
- The one kinship that remains when the others have all gone away