My mind never settles — I scroll and scatter and can't focus
The mind doesn't stop wandering by being scolded; it stops by being given a place worth settling on.
You sit down to do one thing and twenty minutes later your attention is in fifteen places at once and you can't remember any of them. The morning goes to the feed; the hour goes to a worry; the day chooses for you before you choose for it. You try to force yourself to focus, you fail, and then you add self-blame on top of the scatter. It is an old human problem, and Tukaram knew it from the inside — he calls his own mind capaḷa (restless, fickle) and says it won't hold still for even one ghaḍī or paḷa, the short time-units of his day.
What is striking is that Tukaram does not answer with willpower. His very first move in the whole Gatha is not belief or virtue but a question about where attention rests — your vṛtti, the natural settling-place of the mind. The mind, he sees, does not take orders. It responds to whether there is a worthy place to land. So the cure is not to fight the wandering harder but to give the mind somewhere to come and rest, and then to keep gentle, moment-by-moment watch.
He is also honest that the pull is real and habitual — the senses (indriyas) drag attention ahead like a leash, and old habits circle back like a fed dog that won't leave your feet. He doesn't pretend you can white-knuckle that away. His final note is relief, not strain: hand the whole weight over, stop grinding at it with effort that "doesn't run," and let the settledness come.
Abhang 1 — Give the mind a place to land
समचरणदृष्टि विटेवरी साजिरी । तेथें माझी हरी वृत्ति राहो ॥१॥
The opening abhang of the Gatha stakes the entire spiritual life on one move: getting your vṛtti — your settling-place-of-mind — to come down and rest on something worth resting on. This is the direct answer to the scroll-and-scatter problem: the mind doesn't stop wandering by being scolded, it stops by being given a place worth settling on. Tukaram even warns you not to pick something you go to in order to get — the safe resting-place is one you visit expecting to acquire nothing. So name the single place you want your attention to land, before the day names it for you.
Abhang 1731 — Naming the restlessness, and where to take it
मन माझें चपळ न राहे निश्चळ । घडी एकी पळ स्थिर नाहीं ॥१॥
This is the question put into Tukaram's own mouth: "my mind is restless, it doesn't stay steady — not for one ghaḍī or paḷa." He diagnoses the mechanism exactly — the mind "runs ahead, drawn by the pull of the senses," and the chitta is left jolted and broken-up. His response is not to manufacture more discipline; he admits "my own effort doesn't run." Instead of grinding harder against the scatter, he takes the restlessness itself to God as a plea. When you have tried and failed to force focus, this abhang says the honest move is to stop pretending effort alone will fix it and to ask for help with the very mind that won't hold still.
Abhang 2204 — The monkey that goes up and down
जाली माकडाची परि । येतों तळा जातों वरी ॥ध्रु.॥
Tukaram catches the scattered mind in the oldest Indian image for it: the monkey, "coming to the bottom, going to the top" — restless oscillation that never lands. He confesses that nothing in ordinary life suffices, that reaching his hand into everything only brings rebukes and kicks, and that he honestly can't name the mistake that keeps the monkey jumping. This is permission to stop demanding a tidy diagnosis of why you can't focus. The point is not to solve the monkey by analysis but to recognize the up-and-down pattern for what it is — and to stop putting your hand into every passing thing.
Abhang 1376 — Watch yourself, moment by moment
क्षणक्षणां सांभाळितों । साक्षी होतों आपुला ॥१॥
If the earlier abhangs name the problem, this one gives the practice: kṣaṇa by kṣaṇa — moment by moment — "I take care, I become my own sākṣī (witness)." Not a one-time fix but micro-vigilance: stepping into the watcher's seat again and again. Tukaram even applies it to speech — "deliberate before you speak" — the same pause that catches you before you tap, scroll, or react. And he is candid about the engine of his alertness: past fear became present wakefulness. For a scattered mind, the takeaway is concrete — you don't win focus once; you re-take the witness position, gently, each time you notice you've drifted.
Abhang 1808 — The habit that circles back like a dog
श्वाना दिली सवे । पायांभोंवतें तें भोंवे ॥१॥
Feed a dog from your hand once and it circles your feet forever — that, Tukaram says, is exactly his situation with his own sense-cravings. They've moved in; they "dwell right next to me," and they press in hardest at the moment of indulgence, "while eating," wagging and rubbing for more. This is the scroll-compulsion named precisely: a habit you trained, that now comes back on its own and clamors loudest right when you're already feeding it. Naming it as a habituated animal — not a moral failing, not your true self — lets you stop identifying with the craving and see it as something you fed, and can stop feeding.
Abhang 1289 — Put the weight down
देवाचिये माथां घालुनियां भार । सांडीं किळवर ओंवाळूनि ॥१ ॥
The closing turn is relief, not more effort. "Place the load on God's head," Tukaram says — pass the whole burden back, the way you'd wave the āratī flame in offering and let it go. The exhausting part of a restless mind is often the abhimāna, the proud insistence that you must grip and manage it yourself. He tells you to push that load aside and abandon the company of the laṭika — the false, the unreal pulls — and then, on that condition, ānanda (joy, settledness) appears. When focus has become a grim self-battle, this abhang says the way through is to stop carrying the weight alone and let the settledness arrive rather than be forced.
In one breath
Stop scolding the mind and give it a worthy place to rest; name the restlessness honestly and take it to God rather than grinding at it with effort that "doesn't run"; then keep gentle, moment-by-moment watch — becoming your own witness each time you drift — and put the whole weight down instead of white-knuckling it. The mind settles not when forced, but when it is finally given somewhere worth settling and released from the strain of managing itself.