Summary
In this vachana, Basavanna warns that one cannot escape the experiences given with birth by merely saying, “I shall avoid them.” The attempt to avoid what has already arisen is itself the error.
He rejects the repeated refusal, “Not this for me, not this for me, not this for me.” What comes through birth, experience, and karma cannot be dismissed by denial.
Before Kudalasangama Deva, the teaching is direct: karma is not exhausted without being undergone. The seeker must not escape through refusal, but meet what has arisen with awareness.
Imagery & Symbolic Relevance
The first image is the experience given after birth. Birth brings its own field of bhoga, or lived experience. Basavanna does not allow the seeker to pretend that this field can simply be avoided.
The repeated phrase “not this for me” shows the mind’s habit of refusal. It chooses, rejects, and tries to stand outside what has already arisen.
The Shruti statement gives the vachana its authority: karma does not perish without being experienced. This makes the teaching firm. Avoidance cannot complete what must be exhausted through experience.
The movement of the vachana is therefore from denial to acceptance of consequence. The seeker must stop arguing with what has arisen and meet it before Kudalasangama Deva.
Lingayoga
In Lingayoga, this vachana teaches steadiness before lived experience. The seeker must not divide life into what he will accept and what he will refuse when the matter has already arisen through karma.
Practice does not mean escaping experience. It means passing through experience without losing inward relation to Kudalasangama Deva.
Bhakti matures when the seeker does not run from what must be undergone.
Editorial Commentary
The phrase “Nābhuktaṁ kṣīyate karma” means, in working sense, “karma is not exhausted without being experienced.” Basavanna uses this phrase to correct the idea that denial, avoidance, or verbal refusal can cancel what has already arisen.
This vachana should not be expanded into fatalism. Basavanna is not saying that one should live carelessly. He is saying that once experience has arisen through birth and karma, it must be faced and exhausted, not escaped by saying, “not this for me.”
Related Vachana
Supporting Vachana
Bhakta Sthala Vachana 155 — Heaven Is Forged Here on Earth
Vachana 155 supports this teaching by saying that this world itself is the field of shaping. What stands rightly here stands rightly there, and what falters here falters there also. Vachana 689 carries the same principle into Maheshwara Sthala: experience cannot be bypassed, and what has arisen must be met before Kudalasangama Deva.
Advancing Vachana
Prasadi Sthala Vachana 60 — The Ripening Fruit
Vachana 60 advances this teaching by placing gain and loss, fall and rise, honor and dishonor before Kudalasangama Deva. The fruit on the branch does not stand apart from what holds it.
Vachana 689 teaches that experience cannot be avoided by refusal. Vachana 60 carries this into Prasadi Sthala by showing a deeper acceptance: the seeker no longer divides experience as his own possession, but receives every condition in relation to Kudalasangama Deva.
