Muktabai: Open the Door, Jnaneshwar

What happened

Jnaneshwar had been insulted. The accounts vary about who and how, and one version names Visoba Khechar, a man of Alandi who mocked and harassed the family for years and who later reformed completely and became the guru of Namdev.

What Jnaneshwar did: he went into a hut, pulled the tati shut, and would not come out.

What a tati is: a door made of woven reeds or matting, the kind used on a simple hut. Not a heavy door. A screen.

Which is part of the point. What was keeping him in was not the door.

What Muktabai did: she stood outside it and sang.

The Taticha Abhang is what she sang. Around forty two verses in the standard collections, each ending with the same refrain:

Tati ughada Jnaneshwara. Open the door, Jnaneshwar.

What she says in them

This is the material, and it is worth going through, because it is the tradition's most complete statement on anger and on how to treat other people.

On what a saint is:

Know them as saints in this world who have compassion and forgiveness in them.

That line, santa techi jana jagi, daya kshama jyanchya angi, is the most quoted line she wrote and one of the most quoted in Marathi. It is a definition, and it excludes the person sulking behind the door.

On the world's abuse:

• The world will say things. That is what the world does
• A person who cannot bear being spoken about should not have started
• If somebody throws dirt, the answer is not to become dirt

On anger:

• Anger burns the person holding it
• Whatever the other person did, your own state is now your own doing
• A yogi who can be provoked has not finished the work

On the specific hypocrisy:

This is her sharpest line of attack. She points out that he has written about equanimity, that he has taught detachment, and that he is now shut in a hut because somebody was rude to him.

She is holding him to his own book. She was around twelve or fourteen, and the book was the Jnaneshwari.

On the earth:

One of the most striking verses says that the earth is dug into, and torn open, and built on, and it does not complain, and asks whether he can manage what a field manages.

On his responsibility:

She reminds him that people are watching him, that his conduct is now the tradition's conduct, and that shutting the door is a public act whether or not he meant it to be.

And how it ends: he opened the door.

Why these verses are used

They are recited in Maharashtra as a general remedy for anger and for withdrawal, and they are used by people with no particular connection to the Varkari tradition, in the way a well known passage becomes common property.

They are also, practically, a text about somebody refusing to come out.

Which is worth naming clearly. A person who shuts themselves away after being humiliated, who will not speak, and who has to be sung out, is describing something a lot of people recognise.

If that is where somebody in your house is:

• The Taticha Abhang is a beautiful thing to know and it is not treatment
• Persistent withdrawal, refusing to eat, refusing to speak, and hopelessness are symptoms and they respond to help
• Tele MANAS 14416 in India is free, 24 hours, in many languages
• What Muktabai actually did is worth copying though: she stayed outside the door and kept talking, she did not force it, she did not go away, and she addressed him as somebody worth the trouble

The second episode she is central to.

Changdev was a yogi of great reputation, said to be fourteen hundred years old, with siddhis and a large following.

The blank letter. He wanted to write to Jnaneshwar, could not work out how to address a boy of sixteen with that reputation, and sent a blank sheet.

Muktabai's reading of it: she saw the blank paper and said that a man of fourteen hundred years was still a blank page. Kora, in Marathi: blank, unwritten, unripe.

That is a fourteen year old girl assessing the most famous yogi in the region in one word, and the tradition records that she was right.

The meeting. Changdev arrived riding a tiger with a live snake for a whip, and Jnaneshwar made the wall they were sitting on move to receive him.

What happened after: Changdev asked to be taught, and was given to Muktabai as his guru.

Why her and not Jnaneshwar. The tradition does not explain, but the arrangement is the point.

A man with fourteen centuries of accumulated yogic power took initiation from an unmarried teenage girl in a family that the town had refused to eat with.

What she is said to have taught him: that his powers were an extension of ordinary capacity, obtained by effort, and that they had nothing to do with what he had come for.

And there is a famous test. In one version she instructs him and then, to check what he has understood, appears to him without clothing, and he averts his eyes, and she tells him that he has not finished, because if he had seen what he claimed to see, there would have been nothing to look away from.

That episode is told carefully in the tradition and is about the persistence of ordinary perception under a claim of realisation.

Changdev's own end: he became a saint in the tradition, has abhangas attributed to him, and has a samadhi at Puntamba on the Godavari.

What this episode establishes

One. Spiritual authority in this tradition is not distributed by age, sex, caste or accumulated power. It is the whole argument the Varkari saints keep making, and this is its most extreme case.

Two. Displayed powers are the mark of somebody who has not arrived. Every tradition in this series says it. This story dramatises it: the man on the tiger is the student.

Three. And practically, for anybody assessing a teacher today: the person demonstrating abilities, arriving in state, and requiring you to be impressed is the one the tradition would have handed to a fourteen year old for instruction.

The mande

A domestic story, and it links to two other saints in this batch.

Mande are a Marathi festival flatbread, very thin, cooked on a curved earthenware plate.

What happened: Muktabai wanted to make them, and the earthen vessel needed for it was not available or was broken.

Why not available: in the version most told, the potter is Gora Kumbhar, who was in a state of absorption and unable to supply one, or whose own story of loss had left his wheel idle.

What Jnaneshwar did: he sat, entered a yogic state, heated his own back, and told her to bake the mande on it.

And she did.

What the story is for. Two things.

One, it is a story about the household. The greatest philosophical writer in Marathi is being used as a griddle by his little sister because she wants to make bread. The tradition tells it affectionately and does not think it lowers him.

Two, it belongs to a cluster of stories around Gora Kumbhar's house, where the Varkari saints assembled, and where Gora is asked to test which of them are baked, which is described in his own entry.

Her end

In 1297, around a year after Jnaneshwar's samadhi at Alandi.

Where: at Edlabad, on the Tapi, in what is now Muktainagar in Jalgaon district.

What the tradition says happened: she was with Nivruttinath and others, a storm came, there was a flash of lightning, and she was gone. Not a burial, not a samadhi chamber. She disappeared in the light.

She was around eighteen.

The sequence of the family:

• Jnaneshwar took sanjeevan samadhi at Alandi in 1296, at twenty one
• Sopan at Saswad
• Muktabai at Edlabad in 1297, at eighteen
• Nivruttinath at Trimbakeshwar, last

All four within about a year and a half. None of them reached thirty.

Where she is now:

• Muktainagar, formerly Edlabad, on the Tapi in Jalgaon district, is the principal shrine
• Her palkhi sets out from there every year for Pandharpur, joining the wari
• Mehun, nearby, is also associated with her
• She is worshipped at Alandi with her brothers

Her abhangas: around forty, in the standard collections, alongside the Taticha Abhang. They are short, direct, and mostly instructional.

This is the part to keep.

The Taticha Abhang is a practical text about anger, humiliation and withdrawal, written by a teenager to her brother, and it is used that way in Maharashtra.

The core positions, stated plainly:

One. A saint is defined by compassion and forgiveness, not by knowledge. Santa techi jana jagi, daya kshama jyanchya angi. Whatever else somebody has, if they do not have this, the word does not apply. That is a usable test and it applies to teachers, institutions and yourself.

Two. The world will talk. That is the world's job. Being spoken about is not an injury that requires a response. Somebody who cannot bear it should not undertake anything public.

Three. If somebody throws dirt, do not become dirt. The other person's conduct does not license yours.

Four. Anger is held by the person holding it. Whatever started it, the state you are in now is yours to put down.

Five. Be like the earth. It is dug into, cut open, built on and walked over, and it goes on producing. She asks whether a yogi can manage what a field manages.

Six. Your withdrawal is not private. People are affected by it, and shutting the door is an act done to the household as well as to yourself.

How to use it

As a text: read the Taticha Abhang in translation, once, whole. It is around forty two short verses and takes twenty minutes.

As a recitation: it is sung, and recordings are easy to find. It is commonly recited when somebody in the family is angry or has withdrawn, and the refrain does the work: tati ughada, open the door.

As a check on yourself: the specific accusation Muktabai makes is hypocrisy. He wrote about equanimity and then sulked. That is the version of the test to apply inwardly, and it is uncomfortable, which is the point.

As advice for somebody outside a closed door: stay, keep talking, do not force it, and address the person as somebody worth the trouble. That is what she did and it took forty two verses.

And with the limit stated: withdrawal that lasts, refusal to eat, hopelessness and talk of not wanting to be here are medical, not literary. Tele MANAS 14416, free, 24 hours, many languages.

A daily practice from this entry:

• The one line, kept: know them as saints who have compassion and forgiveness in them
• Rama Krishna Hari, the Varkari name
• On a day you have been insulted, the Taticha Abhang instead of the reply you were composing

A closing thought

Her parents were dead before she could remember them, killed by a community's rule. Her family was refused water and refused speech. Her brother wrote the greatest book in her language and then shut himself in a hut because somebody was rude to him.

She was about fourteen. She stood at a reed door and sang forty two verses at him, and the first thing she told him was that saints are the ones with compassion and forgiveness in them, and the last thing she told him, forty two times, was to open the door.

And four years later, at eighteen, she was gone in a flash of lightning by the Tapi, and every year since then a palanquin has walked from that town to Pandharpur with her name on it.

Who: Muktabai, roughly 1279 to 1297, youngest of the four children of Vitthalpant of Alandi and sister of Jnaneshwar. She lived around eighteen years.

Why she matters: she wrote the Taticha Abhang, she was the guru of Changdev, and she is one of the earliest named women poets in Marathi.

The Taticha Abhang: around forty two verses sung outside a reed door behind which Jnaneshwar had shut himself after being insulted, each ending tati ughada Jnaneshwara, open the door.

The famous line: santa techi jana jagi, daya kshama jyanchya angi. Know them as saints in this world who have compassion and forgiveness in them.

Her argument: the world will talk, anger burns the one holding it, dirt thrown does not require you to become dirt, the earth bears being dug and does not complain, and a man who wrote about equanimity should not be sulking in a hut.

Changdev: a yogi said to be fourteen hundred years old sent a blank letter because he could not decide how to address a boy of sixteen. She said a man of fourteen hundred years was still a blank page. He arrived on a tiger, asked to be taught, and was given to her as his student.

Her works: around forty abhangas besides the Taticha Abhang.

Her end: at Edlabad on the Tapi in 1297, in a flash of lightning, at around eighteen, about a year after her brother's samadhi.

Where to go: Muktainagar in Jalgaon district, from which her palkhi walks to Pandharpur each year, and Alandi, where she is worshipped with her brothers.

What to do with her: read the Taticha Abhang once, keep the line about compassion and forgiveness, and use it on the day you have been insulted, in place of the reply you were composing.