Summary
In this vachana, Basavanna speaks directly to the mind and warns it against remembered taste, backward pull, and scattered longing.
Do not keep recalling sweetness like the monkey that has eaten jaggery. Do not turn back like the fox that has eaten sugarcane. Do not flutter from direction to direction like the crow in the sky.
The mind must instead see the Sharanas of Kudalasangama and trust them as Linga. The vachana teaches that the restless mind is steadied by living recognition of the Sharanas.
Imagery & Symbolic Relevance
The monkey that has eaten jaggery is the first image. It remembers sweetness and clings to taste. Basavanna uses this to show how the mind returns again and again to remembered pleasure.
The fox that has eaten sugarcane gives the second warning. Even after tasting, it looks back and pulls toward what has already been consumed. This shows the mind’s habit of returning to old sweetness.
The crow moving through the sky gives the third image. It has no fixed center, but flies from one direction to another. This is the mind dispersed by endless outward seeking.
These images show three movements of restlessness: memory of taste, backward attachment, and directional scattering.
The remedy is not suppression alone. Basavanna gives the mind a true object of trust: the Sharanas of Kudalasangama.
To see the Sharanas as Linga is to recognize living sacred presence. In that recognition, the mind is drawn away from craving and given a center.
Lingayoga
In Lingayoga, the mind must be trained away from remembered taste and scattered movement.
The Anga may sit before the Linga, but the mind can still run after sweetness, memory, and past impressions.
Drishti must therefore be joined with trust. The gaze before the Linga becomes steady when the mind also recognizes the Sharanas as living Linga.
The instruction is practical: do not let awareness wander like the crow, look back like the fox, or cling to taste like the monkey.
Practice matures when the mind finds its resting point in Linga and Sharana-presence before Kudalasangama Deva.
Editorial Commentary
This vachana is a discipline for the wandering mind.
Basavanna does not merely condemn restlessness; he redirects the mind toward the Sharanas as the living form of Linga.
Related Vachana
Supporting Vachana
Vachana 243 — The Collyrium of Divine Love
Vachana 243 teaches that vision must be anointed with Shiva-love. Vachana 274 continues by showing where that transformed seeing must rest: in recognizing Kudalasangama’s Sharanas as Linga.
Advancing Vachana
Maheshwara Vachana 258 — The Mind’s Refusal
Vachana 274 instructs the mind not to cling to taste, turn backward, or scatter in all directions. Maheshwara Vachana 258 advances this into the deeper resistance of the mind that still refuses to rejoice in Linga and trust Jangama before Kudalasangama Deva.
