Poetic Rendering
The vast blue dome of endless sky,
Veils the unseen realms where stars drift by.
Your breath moves galaxies, your gaze lights space, Eternal presence formless grace.
Your feet touch depths no eyes have known,
In silent caverns where seeds are sown.
Your crown, a cosmic aureole rare,
Glows beyond thought, beyond all air.
Invisible yet all things see,
Unmatched in might, in mystery.
Kudalasangamadeva, boundless sea and sand,
You flow through sky,
through heart, through land.
And yet, O wonder! in my palm you gleam,
A living flame, a waking dream.
You dwell within this fragile clay,
By night’s deep hush and light of day.
This vachana is the sublime climax of Basavanna’s spiritual vision, resolving the ultimate paradox: the transcendent, cosmic Divine and the immanent, personal God are one and the same. It expresses the moment of grace where the seeker realizes that the Lord of the meeting rivers (Koodalasangamadeva), who pervades all of existence, simultaneously rests within the palm of their hand. This is not a metaphor but the lived reality of non-dual union, where the boundary between the worshipper and the Worshipped dissolves.
Spiritual Context
Core Spiritual Principle: The non-duality of the transcendent and the immanent (Brahman and Atman are one). The highest realization is not of a distant God, but that the seeker’s own most intimate consciousness is the ground of all existence. The Ishta-Linga is the sacred point where this truth becomes tangible and experiential.
Cosmic Reality Perspective: This vachana is the perfect expression of the Shiva-Shakti union. The cosmic vastness (Shiva) and the individual soul (Shakti) are realized as inseparable. The “palm” (Shakti) does not hold the flame (Shiva) as a separate object; it is the very manifestation of that flame. The entire universe is seen as the body of God (Vishvarupa), and the individual body is seen as the universe in microcosm.
Historical Reality (Anubhava Mantapa Context): As a culminating vachana, this represents the promised fulfillment of the Lingayoga path. It validates the revolutionary practice of wearing the Ishta-Linga on the body. It demonstrates that this was not idol worship but a sophisticated spiritual technology for realizing non-duality. It was the ultimate empowerment, showing every sharana whether farmer, potter, or scholar that the cosmos itself was accessible within their own embodied experience.
Interpretation
“The vast blue dome of endless sky… Your breath moves galaxies…” This establishes the Divine as the transcendent, formless Absolute (Nirguna Brahman), the source and substance of all macrocosmic phenomena.
“And yet, O wonder! in my palm you gleam, a living flame…” This is the revolutionary turn. The infinite is not “out there” but is directly present as the most intimate, personal experience. The “palm” symbolizes the devotee’s own sphere of agency and perception.
“You dwell within this fragile clay, by night’s deep hush and light of day.” This finalizes the union. The “fragile clay” of the body is no longer a limitation but is sanctified as the dwelling place of the Divine. The distinction between the container and the contained vanishes.
Practical Implications: For the practitioner, this means the end of seeking. The practice shifts from striving for a distant goal to abiding in the recognition of what is already and always present. Meditation becomes the celebration of this identity, and service becomes the natural expression of the cosmos serving itself.
The Cosmic Reality
Anga (Human Dimension): The Anga is realized as the localized form of the cosmic body. It is not separate from the Divine but is its precise, conscious expression in human form.
Linga (Divine Principle): The Linga is understood as the one reality that is simultaneously the unmanifest source and the manifest symbol. It is the bridge that makes the incomprehensible cosmic reality tangible to the human heart.
Jangama (Dynamic Interaction): The Jangama is the blissful, continuous awareness of this non-dual truth in every moment. It is the dynamic stillness where the flow of the “meeting rivers” is perceived as the very current of one’s own life.
Shata Sthala
Primary Sthala: Aikya (Union) The vachana is the direct utterance from the state of Aikya. The speaker no longer relates to God; they speak from the identity of that one reality. The rivers have met; there is only the ocean.
Supporting Sthala: Pranalingi (One for whom Linga is Life-Breath) The image of the Linga as a “living flame” in the palm perfectly captures the Pranalingi stage. The Linga is not an external object but is as vital and inseparable as the breath itself it is the very life of the devotee.
Practical Integration
Arivu (Awareness Practices): The practice is to hold the Ishta-Linga and contemplate: “This which I hold is not separate from the consciousness that holds it. This flame is the light of the stars. This form is the form of the cosmos.” This contemplation dissolves the subject-object split.
Achara (Personal Discipline): The only discipline now is to remember this truth amidst the diversions of the world. To constantly return to the base-awareness that one’s own being is the sacred space where the Divine resides.
Kayaka (Sacred Action): All action is seen as the movement of the Divine within itself. The potter’s wheel, the farmer’s field, the scholar’s page all are the “palm” in which the cosmic Linga is gleaning and creating.
Dasoha (Communal Offering): Service becomes the natural expression of a universe serving itself. Seeing the same one reality in all, the sharana serves everyone as they would serve the Linga in their own palm, fostering a community rooted in this ultimate non-dual respect.
Modern Application
We suffer from a profound sense of disconnection from nature, from each other, and from ourselves. We feel like insignificant specks in a vast, impersonal cosmos, leading to existential anxiety and a desperate search for meaning in external validations.
This vachana is the ultimate healing. It liberates us from cosmic loneliness and the prison of a separate self. It reveals that we are not in the universe; the universe is in us. Our very consciousness is the field in which the cosmos awakens to itself. This realization bestows a fearlessness and a peace that cannot be shaken, as one knows oneself to be the eternal, boundless reality.
Essence
The sky, the stars, the depths unknown,
A cosmic light on heaven’s throne.
And in my palm, a flame so bright,
The very same, the one true Light.
No you, no I, no far, no near,
Just Koodalasangama, always here.
This vachana describes the holographic principle of consciousness. Just as every fragment of a hologram contains the information of the whole, the individual soul (Anga/Jiva) is a holographic fragment containing the entire reality of the cosmic Divine (Linga/Brahman). The “palm” is that fragment, and the “living flame” is the entire cosmic pattern, accessible in its fullness at that singular point. The path is the process of the fragment realizing it is the whole.
It is like a single, dew-drop on a leaf at dawn. Within that tiny, fragile sphere is perfectly reflected the vastness of the entire sky, the sun, and the surrounding forest. The drop is not the sky, but at the same time, it contains nothing other than the sky. Basavanna is the dew-drop that has fully realized its content. He holds the entire universe within the humble vessel of his own awareness.
Our deepest longing is to belong, to be at home in the universe, and to know that we matter. The timeless truth revealed here is that we are not merely a part of the universe; we are the universe’s own way of knowing itself. Our sense of separation is the final veil. When it drops, we find that the home we sought was the seeker itself, and the love we longed for was our own eternal nature, shining as a living flame in the palm of our own hand. This is the final secret, the end of the path, and the beginning of a life lived in divine freedom.
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