Life Questions — Ask the Gathā

Bring a real problem. These twenty pages gather the abhangs that answer it.

One response for both praise and blame: you are separate from each.

Tukaram on the day his own death died — and the rest that arrives once hope is let go.

Every great saint had an irregular past — Hari does not remember yours.

When the load is too much, place it on Hari's head and let the tiredness go.

Envying another is your right hand resenting your left — you are limbs of one body.

On caregiving that gets exploited, the spite-cascade, and tending the bond honestly.

On loss, mourning that is real versus performed, and where the weight can finally rest.

On forgiving the past, setting a boundary, and surrendering all three times to the Lord.

If the deity has charge of it, you don't have to keep carrying it.

After the leaving, the silence may not be loneliness but solitude with one companion.

The bent, the lisping, the broken are God's most-beloved guests at the meal.

Anger is usually self-harm dressed up as defiance — Tukaram holds up the mirror.

The diseased run to the physician for their own good — running to God is the same instinct.

After a real life-choice, what arrives is not pleasure but a settled fearlessness.

On the belly-anxiety that drags you everywhere, and the economy of surrender.

Even charity that preserves the I-am-the-giver turns dharma into adharma.

The mind doesn't stop wandering by being scolded; it stops by being given a place worth settling on.

Lust and anger are sesame burnt with the rice — and the cure is not white-knuckle willpower.

Two letters, no cost, no caste — the practices that are available right now and require nothing.

Experience, not argument, dissolves the self-cooked doubt.