Vachana 1393 – The Feast of Inner Fulfillment

The Vachana is sustained by one extended image: provisions placed in vessels, cooked without fire, ripened without further preparation, carried inward, and finally partaken without ownership or division.
The Gross Body as a Vessel
Basavanna first names the gross body as a bhāṇḍa, a vessel.
The embodied life is the first field in which spiritual conduct must be held. Achara cannot remain an inward intention or spoken principle; it must enter the body’s actions, relationships, responsibilities, and daily movement.
The vessel is therefore not empty. It is filled with the provisions called Sarvachara.
The Provisions of Sarvachara
Sarvachara means the fullness of right conduct.
It gathers the whole of lived spiritual discipline rather than one isolated observance. The food of fulfilment is formed from conduct that has entered every part of embodied life.
The Vachana does not separate realization from Achara. The feast begins with the body being filled by right living.
Cooked Before the Fire
Basavanna says that as soon as the vessel is filled, the food becomes cooked even before fire is applied.
Ordinarily, raw provisions require an outer fire. Here the ripening has already occurred inwardly.
The fire is therefore not the true cause of fulfilment. External observance may accompany the process, but the decisive transformation has taken place within the provisions themselves.
Sarvachara has become so complete that it no longer waits for an additional outer force to make it spiritually fit.
Taste Ripened Before Further Preparation
The next image deepens the same recognition.
Before any further means or preparation is applied, the taste has already become mature.
Cooking concerns readiness; taste concerns assimilated fulfilment. The spiritual life is not only prepared—it has acquired its true flavour.
Basavanna therefore describes an inner ripening in which conduct has ceased to be merely performed and has become natural, nourishing, and complete.
The Subtle Body as a Vessel
What has ripened in the gross body is then placed within the vessel called the subtle body.
The movement proceeds from outward conduct into inward awareness.
Right action must become inwardly assimilated. What the body performs must enter thought, feeling, intention, memory, and perception. Otherwise, outer Achara and inner life remain divided.
The second vessel therefore represents the inward reception of what has already matured in embodied conduct.
Abiding Within the Causal Body
Basavanna then abides within the causal body.
The movement goes deeper than action and inward thought toward the ground from which both arise.
At this level, he is no longer merely correcting individual actions or mental movements. The source from which identity, intention, and division emerge is being transformed.
The Vachana thus moves through:
embodied conduct;
inward assimilation;
the causal ground.
Each is called a vessel until the distinction among vessels itself subsides.
Prakruti Subsiding
Basavanna sees Prakruti subside.
Prakruti is the field through which differentiated embodied and inward experience arises. When its dividing movement falls away, the gross, subtle, and causal are no longer held as separate containers.
The Vachana does not say that embodied life is destroyed. What subsides is the division through which each field is claimed as independently existing.
Becoming One Vessel
With Prakruti subsiding, there is one vessel.
The gross body, subtle body, and causal body no longer stand as separate levels possessed by an individual. They become one continuous field of fulfilment.
This is the central turning point. What began as provisions placed within one vessel passes through further vessels until the whole of being becomes indivisible.
The vessel is one because the one who prepares, the food prepared, the place of preparation, and the one who partakes no longer stand apart.
Neither Eating Alone nor Giving to Another
Basavanna says that he neither eats as a separate person nor gives the food to another.
This is not refusal to partake or refusal to share. The categories of a private eater and an external recipient have ceased to govern the act.
There is no isolated “I” possessing the feast, and no spiritually separate “other” to whom part of it must be transferred.
The fulfilment belongs to the one vessel.
Without Saying “Mine”
The possessive claim disappears.
Basavanna does not say, “This food is mine,” “This conduct is mine,” or “This fulfilment is my attainment.”
The provisions, preparation, ripening, vessel, and enjoyment all remain within Kudalasangama Deva’s sacred ground.
The removal of “mine” is necessary because ownership would recreate the division already dissolved.
Without Taking Separate Portions
Basavanna does not gather portions for himself.
The feast is not divided into spiritual gains to be accumulated, measured, stored, or displayed. No particular experience is removed from the whole and claimed as a personal achievement.
Fulfilment remains whole because nothing is extracted from it for the separate self.
Without Scattering
Nothing is dispersed or lost.
The faculties that once moved outward in separate directions have gathered into one field. Conduct, inward awareness, causal source, Prakruti, nourishment, and enjoyment no longer scatter the being.
The one vessel holds the whole movement without fragmentation.
Without Saying One Is Within Another
Basavanna does not finally say that one remains contained within another.
To say that the gross is inside the subtle, or the subtle inside the causal, would still preserve separate vessels and a relation of containment.
Once one vessel alone remains, there is no need to arrange the three as things located within one another.
Their distinction has fulfilled its purpose and subsided.
Partaking and Becoming Fulfilled
Basavanna concludes by saying that he partook and became happy or fulfilled.
This is not the pleasure of a separate enjoyer consuming a spiritual reward. It is the ease of partaking within the One after ownership and division have ended.
The feast is fulfilled because:
conduct has ripened;
inward life has assimilated it;
the causal ground has become clear;
Prakruti’s division has subsided;
the vessels have become one;
no separate claimant remains.
Before Kudalasangama Deva, fulfilment is not something added to Basavanna. It is the natural joy of indivisible participation.