Vachana 1019 — The Boast After the Vanishing of All Distinctions

The vachana begins with a reciprocal image:
Awareness is hidden within forgetting.
Forgetting is hidden within awareness.
Ordinarily, awareness and forgetting appear to be opposites. Awareness knows; forgetting loses what was known. Basavanna places each within the other so that neither can maintain an independent boundary.
Awareness cannot stand outside forgetting and claim complete mastery over it. Forgetting cannot stand outside awareness as a wholly separate condition. Each is enclosed within the other.
Yet a subtle claim remains:
“I stood without distinction.”
The condition may no longer appear divided, but the speaker still retains the one who announces that non-division. The declaration itself becomes the place where hammu—boast or pride—arises.
The repeated expression “hammidenō, hammidenō” exposes this boast. Basavanna does not celebrate the claim. He brings it into view and questions the pride hidden within it.
The next image is even more forceful:
Brahman swallows Brahman.
The act of swallowing removes the distinction between what consumes and what is consumed. One Brahman cannot remain visibly beside another after the swallowing.
Yet after this disappearance, another claim arises:
“I myself am Parabrahman.”
The problem is not the word Parabrahman alone. The concern is the surviving “I myself” that takes possession of the condition.
Even after Brahman has swallowed Brahman, the claimant attempts to stand apart and announce what has occurred. The boast therefore recreates distinction through the very declaration that distinction has ended.
Basavanna then gives a threefold sequence:
The Adi-Shunya is Shunya.
The Madhya-Shunya is Shunya.
The Antya-Shunya is Shunya.
Adi is beginning.
Madhya is middle.
Antya is end.
Together they contain the full course through which something is ordinarily located: its arising, its continuance, and its conclusion.
Basavanna applies Shunya to each position. He then declares that each Shunya is itself Shunya. No beginning-Shunya, middle-Shunya, or final-Shunya remains as a separately possessed spiritual station.
The following question is decisive:
After becoming Shunya, who can know and tell the state that stands beyond from there?
The question removes the observer who might stand outside Shunya and describe it.
If someone remains to say, “I stand here,” “I reached beyond,” or “I know that state,” the distinction between the claimant and the claimed condition has returned.
The final image gives visible form to the entire vachana:
Bayalu draws a picture.
The source presents Bayalu as the power or field from which the picture appears. The picture is formed, visible, and distinguishable, but it does not thereby become independent of Bayalu.
Yet the picture cannot know Bayalu.
The picture cannot step outside the field from which it has been drawn, turn back, and make Bayalu an object before itself. Its very existence depends upon that which it attempts to know.
Basavanna says that such is the state of Kudalasangama Deva’s Sharanas.
The Sharana’s state cannot be possessed as an object by a separate knower. The one who would boast, define, or announce it belongs to the picture, while the state itself belongs to the Bayalu that has drawn it.
The complete movement is therefore exact:
awareness enters forgetting;
forgetting enters awareness;
the boast of being without distinction is exposed;
Brahman swallows Brahman;
the boast “I am Parabrahman” is exposed;
beginning, middle, and final Shunya become Shunya;
no one remains qualified to describe the state beyond;
and the picture drawn by Bayalu cannot know Bayalu.