Their family deity was Vithoba of Pandarpur. Married at the age of fifteen, Tukaram lost his wife and son who died of starvation in a famine. His second wife Jeejabai was a capable but worldly woman who could not understand or appreciate her husband's spiritual aspirations, and took to nagging. They had two children.

As a petty farmer and trader, Tukaram innocent of worldly ways, and was cheated and humiliated in dealings. His life is a favorite topic for Keertankars (reciters and story tellers in praise of God) as it is full of dramatic incidents of misadventures of an unworldly man. He spent much of his spare time in contemplation and studying works of jnaneswar, namdev and Eknath other famous saints of his native land. One guru, Raghava Chaitanya provided spiritual guidance in dream. After a period of contemplation in isolation and sadhana of severe kind, poetry dawned on him. His abhangs reveal the great inner struggle he had to undergo. But they also provide insight into stages of God-realization through the medium of Bhakti or devotion. The separation of the soul from the God gives intense pain to the devotee. This is known as Viraha to Hindu mystics and "Dark night of the soul" to Christian mystics. Tukaram expresses this condition in his abhang:

How can I know the right
So helpless am I
Since thou Thy face hast hid from me
O Thou most high!
I call again and again at thy high gate
None hears me, empty is the house, and desolate.

He goes to the Lord as a beggar for alms--alms of divine love. He wanted to "taste sugar, did not want to become sugar". He wanted "bliss of communion with God; did not want to become one with him". This is the simplest interpretation of dualism in Bhakti cult.

Singing and chanting of God's glory was a surest path of god-realization to Tukaram. Perhaps attainment of inner purity and complete self-surrender enabled him to visualize God's presence and his abhangs attest that he felt god's presence every where and in everything.

Caste and class do not come in the way of God-realization, he declared. There are many stories and miracles attached to Tukaram. One narrates of jealous Brahmins who admonished him, a non-brahmin, for writing prayer songs based on Vedas and puranas and forced him to throw the palm-leaf books on which he had composed abhangs. Since it was the local Dharmadhikari (administrator of religious affairs) who told him to destroy his compositions, Tukaram immersed all the books with great anguish in the river. He then sat meditating on a rock on the bank of Indrayani River.