I keep getting pulled by cravings and temptations — how do I resist?
Lust and anger are sesame burnt with the rice — and the cure is not white-knuckle willpower.
You know the feeling: you mean well, you make resolutions, and then some pull — food, lust, anger, the next hit of wanting — drags you off course again. It feels like a fight you keep losing, and the more you white-knuckle it, the more it presses in. The honest worry underneath is that the craving lives inside you now, not out there, so there is nowhere to run.
Tukaram does not pretend the pull is small, and he does not hand you a trick to muscle it down. His first move is diagnostic: a little kāma-krodha (lust-and-anger) ruins the whole of your good effort the way a few burnt sesame seeds ruin a pot of rice — so the problem is not a side-issue to manage, it is the whole flavour of the dish. His second move is to show you why running and willpower fail: you fed the craving until it became a habituated dog circling your feet, you chose the "mine, mine" spell, and the belly-anxiety you flee from simply walks beside you wherever you go.
So how do you resist? Not by gritting harder, but by changing what you are oriented toward. The craving is fed by the ego — the "I-am-the-one-who-wants" — and Tukaram's cure is to turn the mind toward Pandurang (the Lord, Vitthal), so the self that does the craving quietly loosens its grip. Resistance, for him, is less a wall you build and more an attention you re-aim.
Abhang 90 — A few burnt seeds spoil the whole pot
तीळ जाळिले तांदुळ । काम क्रोधे तैसे चि खळ ॥१॥ कां रे सिणलासी वाउगा । न भजतां पांडुरंगा ॥ध्रु.॥
This is the diagnosis that reframes the whole struggle. Kāma-krodha (lust-and-anger) is like sesame burnt in with the rice — a small amount of craving spoils everything, so you cannot treat it as a minor leak while keeping the rest intact. And notice the rebuke in the refrain: why have you exhausted yourself uselessly — because effort alone, without bhajan (loving remembrance) of Pandurang, just tires you out. The point that lands for the person fighting temptation: stop measuring how hard you're trying and check what you're oriented toward; if the practice is feeding the "I" instead of dissolving it, you've missed the secret.
Abhang 1808 — The craving is a dog you trained to circle your feet
श्वाना दिली सवे । पायांभोंवतें तें भोंवे ॥१॥ तैसी जाली मज परी । वसे निकट सेजारीं ॥ध्रु.॥
Tukaram's most disarming image for "why won't this craving leave me alone." Feed a dog from your hand once and it circles your feet forever — savē, the habit, is what you gave it. That, he confesses, is exactly his situation with sense-attachment: it now dwells right next to him (sējārī), comes close at mealtimes, wags and rubs and pleads, most active precisely when you're enjoying something. The honest help here is that the craving's grip is a habit you trained, not a stranger that ambushed you — which means resisting starts with seeing your own hand in the feeding, and stopping the next scrap.
Abhang 1489 — Bound by wanting, you become the world's servant
आशाबद्ध तो जगाचा दास । पूज्य तो उदास सर्वजना ॥१॥ आहे तें अधीन आपुले हातीं । आणिकां ठेविती काय बोल ॥ध्रु.॥
Here Tukaram shows you the cost of the craving and where the leverage is. The āśā-baddha — the one bound by desire — is a dāsa (slave) of the world, jerked around by every wanting; the one who is udāsa (disengaged, unhungry) is the one worthy of honour. Then the crucial line for anyone tempted to blame circumstances: what is in your own hand leaves you no one else to blame — your response is yours. And the closing warning is exact: fear bound up in the waist-knot attracts the thief who shadows you — meaning the very clinging creates the threat. Resistance begins by owning that the pull is in your hand to loosen.
Abhang 1562 — You were free, then chose the spell
मुक्त होता परी बळें जाला बद्ध । घेउनियां छंद माझें माझें ॥१॥ तुका म्हणे वांयां गेलें वांयां विण । जैसा मृगशीण मृगजळीं ॥३॥
This abhang names the uncomfortable truth that makes resistance possible: you were mukta (free), and you willingly (baḷē) made yourself baddha (bound) by taking up the spell of "mine, mine." Craving is not a fate imposed on you; it is a grip you keep re-choosing. And chasing it is like the deer running after mṛga-jaḷa (mirage-water) — it dies of exhaustion having never reached water that was never there. For the person worn out by temptation, this is oddly freeing: if you bound yourself voluntarily, you can also set the spell down, and the thing you're chasing was never going to satisfy anyway.
Abhang 252 — Running away doesn't work if the craving comes with you
कुटुंबाचा केला त्याग । नाहीं राग जंव गेला ॥१॥ भजन तें वोंगळवाणें । नरका जाणें चुके ना ॥ध्रु.॥
This is Tukaram's blunt warning against confusing fleeing with freedom. A man renounced his whole family — but if the rāga (the passion, the anger) didn't go, then even his devotional singing is vōngaḷavāṇē (dirty), and he doesn't escape. Then the mechanics: retrace your step and you arrive at the same place. The lesson for someone trying to resist by changing scenery — quitting the city, deleting the app, leaving the situation — is that the external move alone is a back-step; the rāga travels with you. The real work is internal resolution, not relocation.
Abhang 1564 — Even prayer becomes a beggar when appetite runs the show
पोट लागलें पाठीशीं । हिंडवितें देशोदेशीं ॥१॥ पोटाभेणें जिकडे जावें । तिकडे पोट येतें सवें ॥ध्रु.॥
Tukaram lets you feel how total a hungry craving's rule can become. The pōṭa (belly) has stuck itself to your back and drives you wandering country to country; wherever you flee out of belly-fear, the belly comes along. Worse, japa, tapa, anuṣṭhāna — chanting, austerity, ritual — turn into dīna (beggars) pressed into service of appetite, and the belly throws away your dignity, making you dance before low people. And it never fills: by what can the belly be filled? — one dies still wasting away in worry. The hard, clarifying point: an appetite you can never satisfy by feeding it will only release its grip when you stop trying to fill the unfillable and turn elsewhere.
In one breath
Tukaram's answer is that craving is not an enemy at the gate but a habit you fed and a spell you keep choosing — so resistance is not harder willpower or running to a new place, both of which just exhaust you while the pull walks beside you. The pull loosens when you stop feeding the next scrap, own that the grip is in your own hand, and re-aim your attention toward Pandurang instead of toward the wanting self. Carry this today: don't fight the craving head-on — change what you're turned toward, and the "I" that craves quietly lets go.