I'm afraid of dying and of everything ending — how do I make peace with it?
Tukaram on the day his own death died — and the rest that arrives once hope is let go.
It is one of the oldest fears there is: not just that your body will stop, but that everything you have built, loved, and held will dissolve — the whole flood of a life draining away, and you with it. Tukaram does not talk you out of this fear, and he does not pretend it is small. In one abhang he says it plainly: bhaya upajalē manā — "fear has arisen in my mind." He starts where you actually are.
But he does not leave you there. His answer turns the fear inside out. Death, he says, is not something waiting at the end of the road — it is part of mirāsī, the inheritance you were born holding, the same way birth was. And once you stop clutching at āsh (hope, the grasping for the life to continue exactly as it is), the fear of death quietly leaves with it. His most famous line goes the whole distance: maraṇa mājhē marōn gelē — "my death itself has died." Not "I escaped death" — the fear of death, the dying-process itself, is what dies, and what is left is not threatened by any ending.
So his path here is twofold. First, hand the fear over — be carried, like a frightened child lifted onto a hip, rather than trying to outrun mortality alone. Second, loosen your grip: treat this life as a traveler's overnight inn (peṇē) and a role in a play, present and fully lived but not desperately held. From there, the ending stops being an enemy. It becomes the foundation finally settling into place.
Abhang 2339 — The day my own death died
मरण माझें मरोन गेलें । मज केलें अमर ॥१॥ आला होता गेला पूर । धरिला धीर जीवनीं ॥२॥
This is Tukaram's most celebrated line on death, and it answers the fear at its root: maraṇa mājhē marōn gelē — maja kelē amar — "my death itself has died — it made me immortal." What dies is not the body but the dying — the fear, the grasping, the constant inner bracing against the end. Once that goes, the flood that came and went (ālā hotā gelā pūra — the whole surge of a life) no longer drowns you; you held steady through it. The ending you dread, he says, is where the foundation of you finally settles into something true.
Abhang 47 — When hope is let go, fear goes with it
आम्ही जरी आस । जालों टाकोनि उदास ॥१॥ आतां कोण भय धरी । पुढें मरणाचें हरी ॥ध्रु.॥
Here is the mechanism behind making peace: āmhī jarī ās — jālō ṭākoni udās — "even hope we abandoned, and became indifferent." And then: "now what fear holds us, of the death ahead?" The fear of dying is fed by āsh, the hope that this life must continue on our terms. Let go of that grip and the fear loosens with it — gele mānāmān (honor and dishonor are gone), sukhduḥkhāche khaṇḍan (joy and sorrow cancelled out). Tukaram is careful to warn this can look like depression from the outside; the true mark is in the body — no khantī, no sorrow being carried. It is not numbness. It is the rest that arrives once hope is released.
Abhang 1471 — Take me on your hip
तुका म्हणे भय उपजलें मना । घेई नारायणा कडिये मज ॥३॥
This abhang refuses to fake bravery. Watching the endless turning of the cycle — gain running out into loss, svarga into naraka, Time (kāḷa) making all living things dance like puppets — Tukaram simply admits: bhaya upajalē manā — "fear has arisen in my mind." His response is not to conquer the fear alone but to be carried through it: ghe'ī Nārāyaṇā kaḍiye maja — "Nārāyaṇa, take me on your hip," the way a frightened child is lifted onto a parent's side. When the scale of dying and ending is too big to face by yourself, this is permission to stop bracing and let yourself be held.
Abhang 2569 — Birth-and-death is the inheritance
उपजों मरों हे तों आमुची मिरासी । हें तूं निवारिसी तरी थोर ॥१॥
Upajō marō he tō āmuchī mirāsī — "to be born and to die is our mirāsī" — our inheritance, the estate we were handed at birth. Tukaram names death not as a freak intrusion but as the ordinary condition of being a jīva; it came with the package, exactly as birth did. And then he hands it over: "if You remove it, You are great." Making peace, in this abhang, is not pretending death isn't yours — it is recognizing it as the inheritance everyone carries, and then setting it down at God's feet rather than carrying its full weight alone.
Abhang 1488 — Striking at death's jaws
आम्ही वीर जुंझार । करूं जमदाढे मार ॥१॥ तुका म्हणे काळ । जालों जिंकोनि निश्चळ ॥३॥
For the moments when fear needs courage rather than surrender, Tukaram offers the opposite posture: the bhakta as warrior. Āmhī vīra juñjhāra — karū jamadāḍhe māra — "we are warriors; we strike at the death-jaws (the very jaws of Yama)." This is not bravado in a vacuum — the armor is devotion itself (the conch, the tulasī garland, the name-marked arrows). And the victory is stillness, not adrenaline: kāḷa — jālō jinkoni niścaḷa — "we have conquered Time and become unmoving." Peace here is the steadiness of someone who has stopped fleeing death and turned to face it, standing firm because they are not standing alone.
Abhang 2399 — Life as an overnight inn
येहलोकीं आम्हां वस्तीचें पेणें । उदासीन तेणें देहभावीं ॥१॥ सोंगसंपादणी चालवितों वेव्हार । अत्यंतिक आदर नाहीं गोवा ॥२॥
The fear of everything ending eases when you stop expecting it to last. Yehalokī āmhā vastīche peṇē — "in this world our dwelling is a temporary inn" (peṇē, the roadside rest-house where a traveler stays only one night before moving on). And life is songa-sampādaṇī — playing a costumed role in a play, "carrying the affair with no extreme attachment, no entanglement." You still live fully — you keep the house, do the duties, love the people — but as a guest and an actor, not an owner clinging to the set. When you never demanded permanence, its ending stops feeling like robbery.
In one breath
The fear of dying is really the grip of hope — that this life and all you love must continue on your terms — so loosen the grip: live this world as a one-night inn and a role in a play, fully but lightly. And what you cannot face alone, hand over: ask to be carried like a child on a hip. Do that, and Tukaram promises something stranger than escape — not that you avoid death, but that the dying itself dies, and what's left in you was never the kind of thing an ending could touch.