Poetic Rendering

Like lightning hiding inside a cloud,
like the soul concealed within the body,
like riches buried deep beneath the earth
so You remain unseen,
O Lord of Koodala Sangama.
I search and stumble,
I forget and wander,
never knowing where You shine
or where my own blindness begins.
My errors are countless
for how can this small mind
grasp Your boundless Presence?
O Kudalasangama Deva,
lift the veils I wear,
let Your hidden radiance
break open within me.

Summary When the Ever-Present Divine Seems AbsentThis vachana reveals Basavanna’s deeply human confession: the Divine is always here, yet often unseennot because God is hidden, but because perception is clouded. Basavanna uses three powerful metaphors: Lightning in a cloud brilliance hidden by its own cover. Soul within the body life so close we never notice it. Treasure buried in the earth wealth present but inaccessible without inner digging. Through these images, he exposes the central irony of spiritual life: We search outside for the One who is already within. Basavanna reframes “sin” not as wrongdoing but as forgetfulness, a lapse in awareness.

The seeker’s pain comes not from moral failure but from being unable to see what is ever-present. Thus, the vachana teaches: God is never distant. The spiritual struggle lies in perception, not distance. Grace is the clearing of inner obscurity, not the arrival of something new. The prayer becomes simple and honest: “Do not give me a new God remove what hides the God already here.”

Spiritual Context

Core Spiritual Principle: The Principle of Concealed Immanence (Gupta Sākṣāt). The Divine is not absent but intentionally hidden within the fabric of reality, making spiritual practice a matter of unveiling (vilaya) rather than acquisition. True “finding” is a revelation of what has always been present.

Cosmic Reality Perspective: This is a non-dual exposition on veiling (Āvaraṇa) and revelation (Prakāśa). Shiva (pure consciousness) is never separate; Shakti (the manifesting power) both conceals (through forms like clouds, bodies, earth) and reveals (through flashes of insight). The seeker’s ignorance is not a negation of Shiva but a playful, self-imposed veiling by Shakti’s own creative power (māyā).

Historical Reality (Anubhava Mantapa Context): This vachana countered ritualistic externalism and transcendental theism by internalizing the search. In a milieu where God was sought in distant heavens or temple idols, Basavanna redirected attention to the immanent, ever-present reality within and all around. It democratized access: the treasure is not in a far-off land but under one’s own feet; the soul is not in a future heaven but in this very body.

Interpretation

1. “Like lightning hiding inside a cloud…” This represents divine power obscured by the mind-stuff. The lightning is the sudden, brilliant flash of divine consciousness (cit); the cloud is the obscuring mind (citta) filled with thoughts, emotions, and ignorance. Crucially, both are made of the same essential substance (water/consciousness), illustrating non-duality.

2. “Like the soul concealed within the body…” This illustrates consciousness identified with form. The soul (ātman) is the animating principle, utterly intimate yet seemingly elusive due to total identification with the physical form. The body is both the expression and the temporary prison of the soul, a veil of flesh.

3. “Like riches buried deep beneath the earth…” This symbolizes grace obscured by materiality and ego. The treasure is the boundless wealth of divine grace (anugraha); the earth is the dense, material world of attachment and the ego’s heavy sense of self. The treasure is not elsewhere but under our very feet, requiring excavation of self-ignorance.

Practical Implications: Spiritual practice shifts from seeking external experiences or accumulating merit to cultivating the inner conditions for revelation: stillness to see the lightning, introspection to feel the soul, and diligent self-inquiry (svādhyāya) to dig up the treasure. The effort is in removing obstructions, not creating divinity.

The Cosmic Reality

Anga (Human Dimension): The Anga is the veil itself the cloud, body, and earth. Its task is not to be destroyed but to realize its own transparency. The anguish of separation is the veil’s density. The Anga must learn to offer itself up for transfiguration, to become a lens rather than a wall.

Linga (Divine Principle): Kudalasangama is the hidden essence in all forms. It is the luminosity inherent in the cloud, the life within the body, the value within the earth. It is the subject that can never be objectified, the seer that cannot be seen by the mind, yet is the only true Seer.

Jangama (Dynamic Interaction): The Jangama is the flash of recognition the moment the cloud parts, the body becomes a temple, the earth yields its treasure. It is the living process of grace where concealment spontaneously turns into revelation, often catalyzed by the presence of a teacher, a moment of crisis, or sustained devotion.

Shata Sthala

Primary Sthala: Prasadi. The entire movement is dependent on grace. The recognition of one’s own blindness and the heartfelt plea, “lift the veils,” is the quintessential act of receiving grace (prasāda). The vachana itself is an expression of that grace dawning as desperate longing.

Supporting Sthala: Bhakta. The emotional intensity of the prayer the sense of helpless searching (“I looked and looked”), confession, and ultimate surrender is characteristic of the Bhakta stage, where devotion is passionate, personal, and often feels the pain of separation most acutely.

Practical Integration

Arivu (Awareness Practices): Practice “The Pause of Potential.” When faced with any obstacle, inner turmoil, or even a mundane object, pause. Silently inquire: “If the Divine is hidden within all things, what is it hiding within this? Can I sense the lightning in this cloud?”

Achara (Personal Discipline): Keep a “Journal of the Unseen.” Each day, note one moment where you perceived a subtle hint of the hidden divine a flash of insight, a surge of compassion, a sense of profound peace. Do not analyze; simply record. This trains perception to value the concealed.

Kayaka (Sacred Action): Perform your work as an act of archaeological devotion. Approach your tasks as if digging for sacred treasure in the field of daily life. Let the quality of your attention be the careful brush that clears away the dust of habit to reveal the sacred artifact beneath.

Dasoha (Communal Offering): In community, practice “Veil Lifting” dialogues. Instead of giving advice, help each other identify the “clouds” (beliefs, fears) that obscure inner light. Create a culture where revealing vulnerability (the cloud) is seen as the first step toward revealing the lightning within.

Modern Application

The Illusion of Scarcity in an Age of Overexposure. We suffer from information overload yet wisdom deficiency; we have endless access to spiritual content yet lack direct perception. We seek the “treasure” in more experiences, more possessions, more digital validation, treating life as a surface to be scanned rather than a depth to be plumbed. We mistake the cloud for the sky.

Cultivating Depth Perception. The practice of Shivayoga today is an antidote to surface living. It involves creating digital and mental space to allow the hidden to emerge. It means treating boredom, confusion, or suffering not as problems to be eliminated but as “earth” that may contain buried treasure. It is the commitment to go deep in one place one practice, one relationship, one vocation instead of skimming many surfaces.

Essence

You wrapped Yourself in cloud,

in muscle, bone, and clay,

and called it world, and called it me,

and hid Your face away.

I took the veil for the view,

the map for the terrain,

and searched the whole world through

through suffering and strain.

Now I see the game:

the hiding is the gift,

the seeking is the flame

that burns the veil so thin.

I stand, a cloud awaiting lightning,

earth awaiting spade,

a body praying for the moment

this soul is unafraid

to be the very treasure

it spent its life to find.

Kudalasangama, rend the veil:

reveal the seeker’s mind.

This vachana illustrates the holographic encoding principle of consciousness. Every manifestation (cloud, body, earth) contains the full information of the source (lightning, soul, treasure) in a compressed, non-localized form. Spiritual ignorance is operating at a resolution too low to decode the pattern. Grace is not an incoming signal but an upgrade in the processing software of awareness that allows the system to recognize the inherent pattern in the noise. The “veil” is the algorithm of separateness; revelation is the system rebooting into its native, non-dual operating mode where the data (the form) and the meaning (the essence) are seen as one.

Imagine a seed. To the naked eye, it’s a hard, small, inert thing (the cloud, the body, the earth). But within it, encoded in its DNA, is the entire blueprint for a mighty tree (the lightning, the soul, the treasure). Water and sunlight (grace) don’t put the tree into the seed; they trigger the seed to express what is already there in hidden form. Our spiritual work is to provide the right conditions (surrender, devotion, inquiry) for the seed of our being to crack open and express its divine blueprint.

Our sense of lack is the most accurate compass we have, but we misread its direction. We feel an emptiness and assume it means something is missing from us. This vachana reveals that the emptiness is actually the shape of the Divine within us, a sacred void pressing against the walls of our constructed self. The ache is not for something external but for the internal to be recognized. We are not poor souls in a barren land; we are misers sitting on a chest of gold, begging for pennies. The tragedy is that we wear the key to the chest around our necks but call it a burden. Basavanna’s prayer is the moment we stop begging and fumble for the key.

Shatasthala