Abhanga 2645
The verse offers a surgical-cut to a specific kind of bondage — the bondage you've built using the mine-and-yours categories. Mine-and-yours is nāthilēm chi — unfounded. When you carry the not-real-mine on your head, the real-self-path recedes. Cut the phāmsā (noose) by throwing away the desire-handle that keeps tightening it. And ask the honest closing question — if Deva himself has become the obstruction, what kind of living is this? The implication: a religion-shaped obstruction is still an obstruction, and the same cut applies.
The verse
बंधनाचा तोडूं फांसा । देऊं आशा टाकोनि ॥१॥
नाहीं तें च घेतां शिरीं । होइल दुरी निजपंथ ॥ध्रु.॥
नाथिलें चि माझें तुझें । कोण वोझें वागवी ॥२॥
तुका म्हणे अंतराय । देवीं काय जिणें तें ॥३॥
Literal translation
Let us cut (tōḍūm) the noose (phāmsā) of bondage; give it up by throwing-away desire. If you take what-is-not (nāhīm tē chi) onto the head — the nija-pantha (self-path) becomes far. Mine-and-yours is nāthilēm chi (nothing-real, unfounded) — who carries the burden? Tukā says: if Deva is the antarāya (obstruction) — what is that living?
What it means
A small surgical-knife verse. Bandhanāchā tōḍūm phāmsā — dēūm āśā ṭākōnī — let us cut the noose of bondage; give it up by throwing away desire. Phāmsā (noose) — the slip-knot that tightens with struggle. Tōḍūm (cut) — not loosen, cut. The desire-handle has to be thrown away for the noose to be cut.
The dhrūpada: nāhīm tē chi ghētām śirīm — hōīla durī nija-pantha — taking what-is-not onto the head — the self-path becomes far. The mistake named: taking nāhīm tē (what is not — false claims, imagined possessions, fictional debts) and carrying-them-on-the-head as if they were real. The result: nija-pantha (the self-path, one's own way) becomes distant. The true path recedes when the false load is carried.
The second verse delivers the philosophical diagnosis: nāthilēm chi mājhē-tujhē — kōṇa vōjhē vāgavī — mine-and-yours is itself unfounded (nāthilēm chi); who is the one carrying the burden? The mājhē-tujhē (mine-yours) categorization is itself fictional. Nāthilēm chi — itself unsupported, baseless, fabricated. And if the categories are baseless, kōṇa vōjhē vāgavī — who is carrying the burden? A question with no real answer — the burden-carrier is also a fiction.
The close: antarāya Devīm kāya jiṇē tē — if Deva is the obstruction (antarāya), what is that living? The honest question. If the very thing that should have been the path-clearing-presence has become the obstruction, the living-itself is hollow. The verse implies — get rid of the obstacle-version of Deva that you have constructed; cut the phāmsā that uses Deva's name.
For someone today
The verse offers a surgical-cut to a specific kind of bondage — the bondage you've built using the mine-and-yours categories. Mine-and-yours is nāthilēm chi — unfounded. When you carry the not-real-mine on your head, the real-self-path recedes. Cut the phāmsā (noose) by throwing away the desire-handle that keeps tightening it. And ask the honest closing question — if Deva himself has become the obstruction, what kind of living is this? The implication: a religion-shaped obstruction is still an obstruction, and the same cut applies.
Where this applies
- Cutting through accumulated mine-and-yours fictions
- Recognizing that taking-the-not-real-onto-the-head distances the self-path
- The honest examination of whether one's Deva has become an antarāya
- The phāmsā (noose) cut — not loosening, cutting