Not courage. Company.
Nine thousand verses, and he spends the last nine on a wish. Look at what he asks for — because it is not protection, and it is not fearlessness.
जें खळांची व्यंकटी सांडो । तया सत्कर्मीं रती वाढो ।
भूतां परस्परें पडो । मैत्र जीवाचें ॥
bhūtāṁ paraspareṁ paḍo, maitra jīvāche
"Let the crookedness of the crooked fall away, and their delight in good work grow instead. And let all beings be bound to one another — in the friendship of soul."
The Pasāyadān is the closing prayer of the Dnyāneshwarī — nine ovīs at the end of chapter 18, numbered 1794–1802 in the standard printings, and the most-recited passage in all of Marathi literature. Old Marathi orthography varies between editions: you will see पडो and जडो in the third line. Text pending a final check against a named critical edition (Sākhare / Government of Maharashtra).
चंद्रमे जे अलांछन । मार्तंड जे तापहीन । ते सर्वांही सदा सज्जन । सोयरे होतु ॥ — "Moons with no blemish on them. Suns that do not burn. May the good be kin to everyone, always."
A frightened person does not need brilliance. They need a light that will not scorch them. If you are choosing who to call tonight, this is the specification: a sun with the heat taken out of it.
दुरितांचें तिमिर जावो । विश्व स्वधर्मसूर्यें पाहो । जो जें वांच्छिल तो तें लाहो । प्राणिजात ॥ — "Let the darkness of harm lift. Let the world see the sun of its own true work. And let every living thing get what it longs for."
He never asks for fear to be removed from anyone. He asks for light, for honest work, and for each creature to get what it wants. Fear here is treated as darkness — not fought, just outlasted by morning.
देवाचिये द्वारीं उभा क्षणभरी । तेणें मुक्ति चारी साधियेल्या ॥ — "Stand at the doorway for even a moment, and all four freedoms are already yours."
Not enter. Not finish. Stand at the door for a moment. On the nights when you can do nothing else at all, turning up at the threshold is counted, in this tradition, as the whole thing.
Every other name in this collection reached you through a translator. Dnyaneshwar was the translator — and that is precisely his teaching about fear. Fear does not argue with you in Sanskrit, or in English. It speaks to you in your mother tongue, at two in the morning, using your own voice. His radical act, as a teenager, was to drag the consolation into the same language the fear was already using.
And then look at how he ends. A boy declared illegitimate from birth, mocked by the learned, whose parents drowned themselves for his sake — he closes the whole book not by asking for protection, and not by declaring himself unafraid, but by asking that everyone else be all right. भूतां परस्परें पडो मैत्र जीवाचें. That is the medicine, stated plainly in the oldest Marathi we have: not courage. Company.
He did not pray to be unafraid. He prayed that no one be alone in it.
Angry at the bend, not the man
The same ovī, read from the other end. Anger's favourite argument is but I am right — and Dnyaneshwar was right. What he does with being right is the teaching.
जें खळांची व्यंकटी सांडो । तया सत्कर्मीं रती वाढो ।
भूतां परस्परें पडो । मैत्र जीवाचें ॥
bhūtāṁ paraspareṁ paḍo, maitra jīvāche
"Let the crookedness of the crooked fall away — and let their delight in good work grow in its place. And let all beings be bound to one another in the friendship of soul."
खळ (khaḷ) means the crooked, the wicked, the ones who do harm. व्यंकटी (vyaṅkaṭī) is the bentness or crookedness itself — a property, not a person. That distinction is the whole teaching, and it is why this verse belongs on a page about anger. From the Pasāyadān, Dnyāneshwarī 18.1795. Text pending a final check against a named critical edition.
चंद्रमे जे अलांछन । मार्तंड जे तापहीन ॥ — "Moons with no blemish on them. Suns that do not burn."
तापहीन — heat-less. Anger is heat; that is not a metaphor, it is what your body is doing right now. He is not asking for the light to be dimmed. He is asking for light that does not scald the person standing in it — how to be right about something without setting someone on fire.
आतां विश्वात्मकें देवें । येणें वाग्यज्ञें तोषावें । तोषोनि मज द्यावें । पसायदान हें ॥ — "Now may the God who is the soul of all be pleased with this sacrifice made of speech — and being pleased, grant me this grace."
वाग्यज्ञ — a yajña of speech. He does not call his book a book. He calls it a fire he fed with words. A person carrying what he carried had to put it somewhere; he put it into language, on purpose, for eighteen chapters.
जो जें वांच्छिल तो तें लाहो । प्राणिजात ॥ — "And let every living thing get what it longs for."
Read it slowly, because it is the hard one. Every living thing — not the deserving ones. He is asking that the people who wronged him also get what they long for. You do not have to be able to do this tonight. It is useful only to know that someone with a better case than yours thought it was the direction to face.
There is no reading of his life in which Dnyaneshwar was not wronged, and he had the platform to say so — nine thousand verses, the most beautiful Marathi anyone had yet written, and an audience. He spends the last nine ovīs asking that the crooked be relieved of their crookedness.
But look closely, because this is not "letting it go" and it is not the soft kind of forgiveness. He does not say the खळ were fine. He names them — crooked — flatly, in the first two syllables. What he asks to be removed is the व्यंकटी: the bend itself, as a thing separate from the person carrying it. He is furious at the bend and not at the man. That is a much more precise operation than either forgiving or condemning, and it is genuinely available to you in an argument tonight: find the bent thing, aim there, leave the person standing.
He named the crookedness. Then he prayed it out of them.
Both halves are the teaching.
These passages live inside the longer reads, beside eleven other voices —
the full long-read on Fear → · on Anger →
Three hundred years later, in the same tradition: Tukaram →