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

8 versesChapter 9

Verses · श्लोक

Verse 1

kṛtākṛte dvandvānithe ledger that never balancesavratī free of vowsnirveda as chapter themeritual anxiety

अष्टावक्र उवाच ॥ कृताकृते च द्वन्द्वानि कदा शान्तानि कस्य वा। एवं ज्ञात्वेह निर्वेदाद् भव त्यागपरोऽव्रती॥९-१॥

aṣṭāvakra uvāca || kṛtākṛte ca dvandvāni kadā śāntāni kasya vā| evaṁ jñātveha nirvedād bhava tyāgaparo'vratī ||9-1||

Ashtavakra said: The pairs of opposites arising from what is done and left undone — when, or for whom, have they ever been at rest? Knowing this, out of dispassion, become supremely renounced, free of vows.

Modern Reflection

Kṛtākṛte, from the done and the undone, points at a very specific anxiety: the guilt of ritual obligation, of duties performed imperfectly or left incomplete, that occupies so much of formal Indian religious life — did I fast correctly, did I complete the pilgrimage properly, did I miss a rite for an ancestor. A retired bank manager in Nagpur, meticulous his whole life about which pujas he has and hasn't performed each year, is asked by Ashtavakra's opening question whether this ledger has ever, for anyone, actually balanced into peace. The answer implied is no — the dvandvāni, the pairs of opposites, done and undone, right and wrong performance, never stop generating new anxieties once the mind is organized around ritual accounting. The verse's cure is not more careful bookkeeping but avratī, freedom from vows altogether — not neglect, but the recognition that no vow was ever going to deliver the peace being sought through it.

Verse 2

jīvitecchā bubhukṣā bubhutsādesiderative desireswatching the world as practicetāta tender addresswitnessing without renunciation

कस्यापि तात धन्यस्य लोकचेष्टावलोकनात्। जीवितेच्छा बुभुक्षा च बुभुत्सोपशमं गताः॥९-२॥

kasyāpi tāta dhanyasya lokaceṣṭāvalokanāt| jīvitecchā bubhukṣā ca bubhutsopaśamaṁ gatāḥ ||9-2||

Only for some fortunate person, my child, do the desire to live, the desire to enjoy, and the desire to know come to rest — simply from watching the behavior of the world.

Modern Reflection

Ashtavakra names three specific hungers — jīvitecchā, the wish to keep living, bubhukṣā, the wish to consume and enjoy, bubhutsā, the wish to know and understand everything — and says the rare, fortunate person finds them cooling not through austerity or scripture but simply loka-ceṣṭā-avalokanāt, from watching the world's behavior. An elderly woman on a Kolkata tram, watching two strangers argue furiously over a seat that will be vacant again in ten minutes, feels something in her own appetite for winning small arguments quietly deflate. She has not renounced anything; she has simply watched long enough. Tāta, my child, the tender address Ashtavakra uses here, signals that this cooling is not a discipline to be imposed but a grace that arrives, unforced, to whoever has watched carefully and long enough.

Verse 3

tāpa trayathreefold afflictionsamkhya borrowinganityatāpeace from ascertainment not solution

अनित्यं सर्वमेवेदं तापत्रयदूषितं। असारं निन्दितं हेयमिति निश्चित्य शाम्यति॥९-३॥

anityaṁ sarvamevedaṁ tāpatrayadūṣitaṁ| asāraṁ ninditaṁ heyamiti niścitya śāmyati ||9-3||

All of this is impermanent, tainted by the threefold suffering, worthless, blameworthy, to be abandoned — having ascertained this, one becomes peaceful.

Modern Reflection

Tāpa-traya, the threefold affliction, is a technical Samkhya category that the opening verse of the Samkhya Karika also invokes: ādhyātmika (suffering from one's own body and mind), ādhibhautika (suffering inflicted by other creatures), and ādhidaivika (suffering from natural and cosmic forces beyond anyone's control). A schoolteacher in Bhopal, in the same month, deals with her own knee surgery (ādhyātmika), a colleague's unkindness in the staff room (ādhibhautika), and a flood that closes the school for a week (ādhidaivika) — three unrelated categories of suffering that classical Samkhya insists share a single root: contact with the changeable world. Ashtavakra's verse does not ask her to solve any of the three; it asks her to notice that all three are structurally guaranteed by anityatā, impermanence itself, and that the noticing, niścitya, having firmly ascertained this, is what settles the mind, not a solution to any one instance.

Verse 4

yathāprāptavartīno dvandva free agethe receding horizoncontentment with whatever comesrhetorical question as teaching

कोऽसौ कालो वयः किं वा यत्र द्वन्द्वानि नो नृणां। तान्युपेक्ष्य यथाप्राप्तवर्ती सिद्धिमवाप्नुयात्॥९-४॥

ko'sau kālo vayaḥ kiṁ vā yatra dvandvāni no nṛṇāṁ| tānyupekṣya yathāprāptavartī siddhimavāpnuyāt ||9-4||

What time, what age is there in which the pairs of opposites do not afflict men? Disregarding them, remaining content with whatever comes, one attains perfection.

Modern Reflection

Yathā-prāpta-vartī, one who lives according to whatever is obtained, is one of the most practically demanding phrases in this chapter, because it does not promise a future age free of dvandva, the pairs of opposites — heat and cold, praise and blame, gain and loss. Ashtavakra's rhetorical question, ko'sau kālo vayaḥ kim vā, what time or age is free of these, forecloses the common hope that a different life stage, a different decade, a calmer job, will finally deliver a dvandva-free existence. A young mother in Indore, exhausted, waiting for her child to be older so life will be easier, and a grandmother in the same household, waiting for her joints to improve so life will be easier, are both, in Ashtavakra's diagnosis, waiting for a kāla, a time, that does not exist. The verse's siddhi, perfection or attainment, is not the arrival of a dvandva-free period but upekṣā, disregard of the pairs while they continue, met by yathā-prāpta-vartitā, taking whatever the day serves without waiting for a better one.

Verse 5

nānā matamsages disagreedisillusionment with the searchnirveda across the chapterpeace without the one right system

नाना मतं महर्षीणां साधूनां योगिनां तथा। दृष्ट्वा निर्वेदमापन्नः को न शाम्यति मानवः॥९-५॥

nānā mataṁ maharṣīṇāṁ sādhūnāṁ yogināṁ tathā| dṛṣṭvā nirvedamāpannaḥ ko na śāmyati mānavaḥ ||9-5||

Seeing the diverse opinions of the great sages, of the saints, and likewise of the yogis, what human being, having arrived at dispassion, does not find peace?

Modern Reflection

This verse makes a genuinely unusual move for a scripture to make: it points at the disagreement among scriptures and sages as itself a source of peace. Nānā matam, the diverse opinions, of maharṣi, sādhu, and yogi alike — Ashtavakra does not resolve the disagreement or claim his own system is the exception. A young man in Rishikesh who has spent three years moving from ashram to ashram, collecting contradictory instructions about diet, breath, mantra, and posture from equally serious-seeming teachers, finally stops not because he found the right teacher but because he saw, clearly, that even the great ones disagree with each other. That seeing, dṛṣṭvā, is what produces nirveda, disillusionment or dispassion — not with truth, but with the project of finding certainty through more searching. Ashtavakra's question, ko na śāmyati, who does not find peace after seeing this, implies that the disagreement itself, properly seen, is liberating.

Verse 6

mūrti parijñānam caitanyasyadefinition of gurunirveda samatātārayati saṃsṛteḥauthority without credentials

कृत्वा मूर्तिपरिज्ञानं चैतन्यस्य न किं गुरुः। निर्वेदसमतायुक्त्या यस्तारयति संसृतेः॥९-६॥

kṛtvā mūrtiparijñānaṁ caitanyasya na kiṁ guruḥ| nirvedasamatāyuktyā yastārayati saṁsṛteḥ ||9-6||

Having attained direct knowledge of the true nature of consciousness — is he not indeed a guru, the one who, through the combination of dispassion and equanimity, ferries others across the ocean of worldly existence?

Modern Reflection

Ashtavakra offers a working definition of guru here that has nothing to do with lineage, ordination, robes, or institutional authority — mūrti-parijñānaṁ caitanyasya, complete knowledge of the true form of consciousness, combined with nirveda-samatā, dispassion and equanimity. A family in Varanasi debates for weeks which formally initiated swami should be approached for guidance for a son entering college, while the son himself has quietly stopped panicking about his exam results after long conversations with an uncle who has no religious title at all but who simply never seems rattled by anything and never claims certainty he doesn't have. Ashtavakra's verse would call the uncle, not the swami by default, the guru — the qualification is tārayati saṃsṛteḥ, actually ferrying someone across the difficulty of ordinary existence, not credentials.

Verse 7

bhūta vikārānseeing elements not shapestatkṣaṇāt bandhanirmuktaḥimmediate not gradualvaisheshika borrowing

पश्य भूतविकारांस्त्वं भूतमात्रान् यथार्थतः। तत्क्षणाद् बन्धनिर्मुक्तः स्वरूपस्थो भविष्यसि॥९-७॥

paśya bhūtavikārāṁstvaṁ bhūtamātrān yathārthataḥ| tatkṣaṇād bandhanirmuktaḥ svarūpastho bhaviṣyasi ||9-7||

See the transformations of the elements as they truly are — as mere elements. From that very instant you will be freed from bondage, established in your own true nature.

Modern Reflection

Bhūta-vikārān, the transformations or modifications of the elements, is Ashtavakra's technical term for every object and body a person encounters — including their own — reduced to what classical Indian physics considered them actually made of: earth, water, fire, air, space, arranged temporarily into a particular shape. A potter in Khurja, who has spent a lifetime watching identical clay become a water-jug, a decorative urn, a roof tile, and eventually shards swept into the same bin, is being asked by this verse to see people, relationships, and even his own body the way he already, effortlessly, sees clay: as bhūta-mātra, mere element, temporarily organized into vikāra, a modification or shape. The verse's promise, tatkṣaṇāt bandhanirmuktaḥ, freed from bondage that very instant, is unusually immediate for this text — not a gradual process, but a single shift of seeing.

Verse 8THE FAMOUS aphorism — vāsanā alone is saṃsāra, one of Advaita's most quoted lines

vāsanā eva saṃsāraḥmental residue not eventsvas root dwelling and perfumesthitir yathā tathāchapter nine closing

वासना एव संसार इति सर्वा विमुंच ताः। तत्त्यागो वासनात्यागात्स्थितिरद्य यथा तथा॥९-८॥

vāsanā eva saṁsāra iti sarvā vimuṁca tāḥ| tattyāgo vāsanātyāgātsthitiradya yathā tathā ||9-8||

Vāsanā alone is saṃsāra — abandon all of them. The abandonment of saṃsāra comes from the abandonment of vāsanā. Thereafter, one's abiding, today, is fine however it may be.

Modern Reflection

Vāsanā eva saṃsāraḥ, vāsanā alone is saṃsāra, is among the most quoted single lines in all of Advaita literature, precisely because it relocates the entire problem of bondage from the world itself to the residue the world leaves in the mind. Vāsanā, from the root vas, to dwell or to perfume — the same root that gives vāsa, a dwelling, and also the scent that lingers in a cloth after the flower that perfumed it is gone — names exactly this: not the event, but what remains dwelling in the mind after the event has passed. An elderly widower in Kanpur has not visited the house he grew up in for forty years, yet a single smell of wet earth after the first monsoon rain still delivers him, instantly, to his mother's kitchen — the house is gone, the mother is gone, but the vāsanā, the perfuming residue, persists and organizes an entire emotional weather system around a smell. Ashtavakra's radical claim is that saṃsāra, the whole cycle of suffering, is built from exactly this kind of residue, not from the world's events themselves — and that letting the residue go, rather than escaping the world, is the entire task.

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