சாகாத கால்வேகாத் தலையுங் காணா
மீகாத மோனத்தே விளங்கு மான்மா
போகாதே வாராதே புசித்தி டாதே
ஆகாதே யழியாதே அனைத்து மான்மா
saagaadha kaalvegaath thalaiyung kaaNaa
meegaadha moanaththae viLanggu maanmா
poagaadhae vaaraadhae pusiththi daadhae
aagaadhae yazhiyaadhae anaiththu maanmா
The Ānma (Self/soul) that does not die—
that does not hasten with the leg/foot (does not move), and whose “head” is not seen;
that shines within unsurpassed silence (mouna);
that does not go, does not come, does not eat/consume;
that does not become, does not perish—
that Ānma is everything.
That which is realized as the Self is not a traveling entity inside space-time. In the peak of inner silence it shines by itself: unmoving, unlocatable, untouched by the rhythms of bodily life (going, coming, feeding), and untouched by ontological change (arising or perishing). It is named “ānma,” yet it is also “all”—the whole field of being.
This verse speaks in the negative, a common Siddhar strategy: by denying ordinary predicates (movement, location, nourishment, birth, destruction), it points to a principle that is not an object among objects.
1) “Does not die” (சாகாத): On the surface this can echo Siddha aims of deathlessness (kāya-siddhi), but the rest of the verse pulls the meaning toward a deeper immortality: not the body’s longevity, but the Self as inherently beyond death.
2) “Leg does not hasten / does not move” and “head is not seen” (கால்வேகாத் தலையுங் காணா): The language can be read bodily (stillness of limbs, head not ‘found’) and metaphysical (the Self has no spatial coordinates—no ‘top’ or ‘head’ to locate). Siddhar idiom often uses body-parts to deny form: if neither foot nor head can be fixed, the ‘entity’ is not a bounded body.
3) “Shines in unsurpassed mouna” (மீகாத மோனத்தே விளங்கு): Mouna here is not mere absence of speech; it is the stilling of the mind’s discursiveness. In that non-conceptual clarity, the Self is said to “shine” (விளங்கு) as self-luminous awareness.
4) “Does not go/come/eat” (போகாதே வாராதே புசித்திடாதே): These are signatures of embodied life and karmic becoming—migration, return, and consumption/enjoyment. Denying them suggests a reality that is not a doer/enjoyer, not bound to saṁsāric motion, and not dependent on intake (food, prāṇa, experiences).
5) “Does not become; does not perish; is all” (ஆகாதே யழியாதே அனைத்து): The Self is presented as neither produced nor destroyed, and as ‘all’—a non-dual gesture where the realized Ānma is not a private soul but the ground in which all appearances arise.
Overall, the verse aligns with a non-dual Siddha metaphysics: realization is not acquiring a new thing, but recognizing the ever-present, actionless, self-evident awareness that remains when movement, appetite, and identity-markers fall silent.