Also called the Ashtavakra Samhita — a dialogue between the sage Ashtavakra and King Janaka of Videha on the nature of the Self

Ashtavakra Gita - The Song of Self-Realization

अष्टावक्र गीता

4 versesChapter 6

Verses · श्लोक

Verse 1THE FAMOUS space-and-pot opening of chapter six — I am boundless like space, the world merely a pot within it

ākāśavat anantaḥ ahamghaṭavat prākṛtaṁ jagatghaṭākāśa mahākāśapot and spaceopening refrain of chapter six

जनक उवाच॥ आकाशवदनन्तोऽहं घटवत् प्राकृतं जगत्। इति ज्ञानं तथैतस्य न त्यागो न ग्रहो लयः॥६-१॥

janaka uvāca|| ākāśavadananto'haṁ ghaṭavat prākṛtaṁ jagat| iti jñānaṁ tathaitasya na tyāgo na graho layaḥ||6-1||

Janaka said: I am infinite like space; this natural, constituted world is like a pot [within it]. This is the understanding — and because of it, there is nothing here to renounce, nothing to grasp, and nothing that needs to be made to dissolve.

Modern Reflection

In Khurja, Uttar Pradesh's old pottery town, a kumhar throws a wet lump of clay into a ghaṭa on his wheel, and for a moment there are two spaces in the world: the space enclosed by the rising clay wall and the space of the workshop around it. A child watching for the first time asks whether the air trapped inside the new pot is different air from the air outside. It is not — it is the same ākāśa the whole time, merely appearing bounded because a wall of mud now runs between the two names for it. This is the exact pairing Ashtavakra opens chapter six with: ākāśavat anantaḥ, I am like space itself, infinite; ghaṭavat prākṛtaṁ jagat, the constituted world is like the pot. Advaita commentators built an entire technical vocabulary on this image — ghaṭākāśa, pot-space, versus mahākāśa, the great space — precisely because a village potter's shed makes the abstraction physical. When the same pot is later immersed at a Ganesh visarjan and its clay walls dissolve in the river, nothing happens to the space that was inside it. It was never separate to begin with; only the wall was ever temporary.

Verse 2

mahodadhi iva ahamvīci sannibhaḥwave and oceanneither renounce nor grasprefrain of chapter six

महोदधिरिवाहं स प्रपंचो वीचिसन्निभः। इति ज्ञानं तथैतस्य न त्यागो न ग्रहो लयः॥६-२॥

mahodadhirivāhaṁ sa prapaṁco vīcisannibhaḥ| iti jñānaṁ tathaitasya na tyāgo na graho layaḥ ||6-2||

I am like the great ocean; this manifold world is like a wave upon it. This is the understanding — and because of it, there is nothing here to renounce, nothing to grasp, and nothing that needs to be made to dissolve.

Modern Reflection

During the monsoon at Haridwar, the Ganga swells and throws up whirlpools and standing waves along the ghats that were not there in the dry season. No one mistakes a whirlpool for something separate from the river that must be fished out, kept, or made to disappear. It simply is the river, moving in a particular shape for a while. Ashtavakra's compound vīci-sannibhaḥ, wave-resembling, makes the same claim about the entire visible world in relation to the self: mahodadhiḥ, the great ocean. The refrain that closes the verse, na tyāgo na graho layaḥ, rules out the three things a spiritual seeker usually tries to do with the world — renounce it, acquire it, or dissolve it in meditation. None apply, because a wave was never a separate object to begin with. This single Sanskrit simile is the seed of the ocean-and-wave image Vivekananda would use centuries later to explain Advaita to modern audiences.

Verse 3

śukti saṅkāśaḥshell and silveradhyāsa superimpositionviśva kalpanācorrecting not destroying

अहं स शुक्तिसङ्काशो रूप्यवद् विश्वकल्पना। इति ज्ञानं तथैतस्य न त्यागो न ग्रहो लयः॥६-३॥

ahaṁ sa śuktisaṅkāśo rūpyavad viśvakalpanā| iti jñānaṁ tathaitasya na tyāgo na graho layaḥ ||6-3||

I am like mother-of-pearl; the imagined universe is like the silver [that appears to shine on it]. This is the understanding — and because of it, there is nothing here to renounce, nothing to grasp, and nothing that needs to be made to dissolve.

Modern Reflection

Every student of Indian philosophy meets the shukti-rajata nyāya, the mother-of-pearl-and-silver example, early: a piece of nacre glinting on a Konkan beach at dusk is briefly mistaken for a coin of silver, until picked up. Nothing about the nacre changed when the mistake happened, and nothing about it changes when the mistake is corrected. Ashtavakra applies the example to the entire visible universe. Viśva-kalpanā, the imagined universe, is not unreal in the sense of being nothing at all; it is unreal in the sense that the silver was unreal — a misreading of something that was, all along, something else. The verse's force is that correcting the misreading requires no effort applied to the world, only a clearer look at what the shell actually is.

Verse 4

sarva bhūteṣu ahamin all beings and they in mereciprocal formulano metaphor neededchapter six closing

अहं वा सर्वभूतेषु सर्वभूतान्यथो मयि। इति ज्ञानं तथैतस्य न त्यागो न ग्रहो लयः॥६-४॥

ahaṁ vā sarvabhūteṣu sarvabhūtānyatho mayi| iti jñānaṁ tathaitasya na tyāgo na graho layaḥ ||6-4||

I am in all beings, and equally, all beings are in me. This is the understanding — and because of it, there is nothing here to renounce, nothing to grasp, and nothing that needs to be made to dissolve.

Modern Reflection

This is the fourth and final image of the chapter's refrain, and it drops the simile altogether: no ocean, no shell, just a flat double statement, sarva-bhūteṣu (in all beings) and atho mayi (and in me), placed on either side of the verse like two pans of a balance. In a Chennai apartment building, a resident who has spent decades believing devotion means feeding every stray dog on the street, and separately believing meditation means withdrawing attention from the street entirely, is being offered a single sentence that dissolves the distinction between those two disciplines. The dog is not outside the self to be served through effort, nor is the self elsewhere to be found through withdrawal. Ashtavakra's closing image of the chapter is the plainest because by verse four he no longer needs a picture to make the point land.

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