Summary
Basavanna questions the idea that Kudalasangama Deva comes, stays in many places, and then departs. The Divine is not like an ordinary object that moves from place to place, appears here, and disappears there.
The vachana then turns through the image of a child fallen on the road and lifted by its mother. Basavanna sees his own condition in that image: he had been thrown into birth and into the terrible condition of worldly existence, yet he was lifted by a grace that came before his own strength.
The final movement is decisive. He asks what grace remains to be sought, and what distinction remains between Hara and Hari. He lives by holding fast to both Linga and Jangama. The Aikya source states that the task is not to find something absent, but to hold Linga and Jangama together and live in the recognition that still sacred center and living sacred presence are not to be divided.
Imagery & Symbolic Relevance
The opening line asks whether the Lord comes and sits in many places and then departs. Basavanna begins by questioning perceived movement. The problem is not that Kudalasangama Deva truly comes and goes; the problem is that awareness experiences presence as if it arrived and left.
The phrase “many places” gives the spatial image. The mind imagines sacred presence as being located here, absent there, present now, and gone later. Basavanna tests this way of seeing.
The question “does it depart?” deepens the correction. What is truly Divine cannot be treated as a temporary visitor. The Aikya source explains that coming and going symbolize perceived spiritual fluctuation, the illusion of distance, and the mind’s projection of separation.
The line about not belonging to either side removes fixed placement. Kudalasangama Deva cannot be confined to one side, one location, one category, or one sectarian boundary. The Divine is not captured by the divisions through which the mind ordinarily understands presence.
The child fallen in the street gives the next image. The child is exposed, helpless, and unable to save itself. The source reads this as embodied vulnerability and the human condition within fragmentation.
The mother coming near and lifting the child gives the image of grace. The child does not first earn the mother’s arms. The mother’s lifting comes as recovery, protection, and restoration.
Basavanna then brings the image into his own life. He says he knows that he was brought into birth and placed in the terrible condition of Aghora-like hell. This is the recognition of embodied vulnerability: life itself has placed him in a frightening field, not under his own control.
The question before Kudalasangama Deva — “What grace remains for me?” — marks the shift from seeking to recognition. If the mother has already lifted the child, grace is not something still to be bargained for. It has already acted.
The question “What is Hara? What is Hari?” removes another division. Basavanna does not let names become barriers. Hara and Hari may stand as different religious names, but the realized condition does not remain trapped in their separation.
The final line says that he lives by holding fast to both Linga and Jangama. This is the heart of the vachana. Linga is not held without Jangama; Jangama is not held without Linga. The source describes this holding as integrated Lingayoga: inner realization and living sacred presence held together.
Together, the lines move from imagined coming and going, to helplessness, to being lifted, to the end of further seeking, to the refusal of sectarian division, and finally to living by holding Linga and Jangama together.
Lingayoga
In Lingayoga, this vachana teaches that the seeker must not divide sacred presence into arrival and absence, inner and outer, symbol and living presence, Hara and Hari, Linga and Jangama.
The practice-point is direct: do not chase the Divine as if it has gone elsewhere. Do not hold the Linga inwardly while neglecting the Jangama as living presence. Do not make names into barriers. Live by holding both Linga and Jangama without separation.
The Aikya source states that Vachana 391 extends the witness of Vachana 390 beyond inwardness into non-separation, and that holding both Linga and Jangama is the stabilized form of this living recognition.
Editorial Commentary
This vachana should be read as a correction of imagined absence. Basavanna does not deny that the devotee may feel presence and absence. He questions whether the Divine itself truly comes and goes.
The child and mother image must remain central. The seeker is not saved by mastery or argument. The child is lifted. After that lifting, the seeker no longer lives by anxious seeking, but by holding fast to Linga and Jangama before Kudalasangama Deva.
Related Vachana
Supporting Vachana
Sharana Sthala Vachana 1343 — The Living Linga Stood Before Me
Sharana Vachana 1343 supports this Aikya vachana by confessing the danger of missing the living Linga. There, Basavanna says that Kudalasangama Deva came as Jangama-Linga and stood before him, but he turned toward Sthavara and wandered in delusion. The source clarifies that the failure was not reverence for Sthavara-Linga, but attachment to the fixed form while missing the living revelation before him.
Aikya Vachana 391 carries that correction into stabilized holding. In Sharana Vachana 1343, the Jangama-Linga is missed because the fixed form is held apart from living presence. In Aikya Vachana 391, Basavanna lives by holding both Linga and Jangama, so that fixed sacred center and living sacred presence are no longer separated.
Advancing Vachana
Aikya Sthala Vachana 393 — No Greater, No Lesser
Aikya Vachana 393 advances this teaching within Aikya Sthala. In Vachana 391, Basavanna lives by holding both Linga and Jangama. In Vachana 393, even the remaining tendency to compare them falls away: touching the Linga with the hand and bowing before the Jangama are no longer ranked as greater or lesser, and the Jangama itself is declared to be the Linga.
Thus Vachana 391 establishes simultaneous holding of Linga and Jangama, while Vachana 393 carries that holding into the removal of hierarchy. What is held together in Vachana 391 becomes direct non-difference in Vachana 393 before Kudalasangama Deva.
