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 10

Verses · श्लोक

Verse 1

dharma as hetu not exemptartha anartha wordplaysarvatra anādaramtransactional merit rejectedchapter ten opening

अष्टावक्र उवाच ॥ विहाय वैरिणं काममर्थं चानर्थसंकुलं। धर्ममप्येतयोर्हेतुं सर्वत्रानादरं कुरु॥१०-१॥

aṣṭāvakra uvāca || vihāya vairiṇaṁ kāmamarthaṁ cānarthasaṁkulaṁ| dharmamapyetayorhetuṁ sarvatrānādaraṁ kuru ||10-1||

Ashtavakra said: Having abandoned desire, the enemy, and wealth, which is crowded with misfortune, and even dharma, which is the means to these two — cultivate disregard toward all of it, everywhere.

Modern Reflection

Ashtavakra opens the chapter with the most socially provocative claim in the entire text: not just kāma, desire, and artha, wealth, but dharma itself, when it is pursued as hetu, a means or cause serving those two, deserves anādara, disregard. A businessman in Surat who has spent decades funding temple renovations and organizing charity drives, quietly hoping each act of merit compounds into some cosmic credit balance, is being told that this transactional dharma is not different in kind from the desire and wealth it was meant to offset. Ashtavakra is not against generosity or right conduct; he is against dharma performed as an investment, a hetu, a means to some further end. The verse's instruction, sarvatra anādaram kuru, cultivate disregard everywhere, targets the instrumental relationship to all three, not the acts themselves.

Verse 2

mitra kṣetra dhana inventorythree or five dayssvapna indrajāla vatthe unromantic listpossessions as short lease

स्वप्नेन्द्रजालवत् पश्य दिनानि त्रीणि पंच वा। मित्रक्षेत्रधनागारदारदायादिसंपदः॥१०-२॥

svapnendrajālavat paśya dināni trīṇi paṁca vā| mitrakṣetradhanāgāradāradāyādisaṁpadaḥ ||10-2||

See friends, land, wealth, house, wife, inheritance, and every such possession as lasting only three or five days, like a dream or a magician's illusion.

Modern Reflection

The verse's single long compound, mitra-kṣetra-dhana-āgāra-dāra-dāya-ādi-sampadaḥ, friends-land-wealth-house-wife-inheritance-and-so-on, reads almost like an inventory list, deliberately unromantic, the way a will or a property deed would list assets. A man in Lucknow updating his own will at seventy, listing precisely these categories — friends named as witnesses, land parcels, savings, the family house, his wife as beneficiary, inheritance to be divided — is doing, on paper, exactly what Ashtavakra asks him to do in the mind: see each item clearly named, and dated, as though it belongs to a very short lease. Dinaani trini pancha va, three or five days, is not an exact number; it is Sanskrit's way of saying 'a handful,' an ordinary short stay, not a tragedy, not a poetic exaggeration — the same tone in which one might describe a work trip. The verse's ease depends on that ordinary, unmelodramatic register.

Verse 3

tṛṣṇā as diagnosticyatra tṛṣṇā tatra saṃsāraḥprauḍha vairāgya mature dispassionnot willpower but refugerepeatable test not doctrine

यत्र यत्र भवेत्तृष्णा संसारं विद्धि तत्र वै। प्रौढवैराग्यमाश्रित्य वीततृष्णः सुखी भव॥१०-३॥

yatra yatra bhavettṛṣṇā saṁsāraṁ viddhi tatra vai| prauḍhavairāgyamāśritya vītatṛṣṇaḥ sukhī bhava ||10-3||

Wherever there is thirst, know saṃsāra to be there. Taking refuge in mature dispassion, become free of thirst, and be happy.

Modern Reflection

Tṛṣṇā, literally thirst, is the verse's diagnostic instrument — not a symptom of saṃsāra but its very location: yatra yatra bhavet tṛṣṇā, wherever thirst arises, saṃsāra is precisely there, nowhere else needs to be checked. A shopkeeper in Jodhpur can locate saṃsāra with total precision in his own body: it is the specific tightening he feels the instant a customer walks past his stall toward a competitor's, not some abstract cosmic wheel he needs a guru to explain to him. Prauḍha-vairāgya, mature or full-grown dispassion — the adjective matters, since Indian philosophical literature distinguishes mature dispassion (arrived at through insight) from immature dispassion (a temporary mood after a disappointment, which evaporates once desire returns) — is offered as the specific refuge, not willpower or suppression, which the verse never mentions.

Verse 4THE FAMOUS one-line definition — bondage is nothing but thirst, its end is liberation

tṛṣṇā mātra ātmakaḥ bandhaḥthe tightest definition in the textbondage reduced to one causemātra as reductive devicecontentment muhurmuhuḥ

तृष्णामात्रात्मको बन्धस्तन्नाशो मोक्ष उच्यते। भवासंसक्तिमात्रेण प्राप्तितुष्टिर्मुहुर्मुहुः॥१०-४॥

tṛṣṇāmātrātmako bandhastannāśo mokṣa ucyate| bhavāsaṁsaktimātreṇa prāptituṣṭirmuhurmuhuḥ ||10-4||

Bondage consists of nothing but thirst; its destruction is called liberation. By mere non-attachment to worldly existence, one has contentment with whatever comes, again and again.

Modern Reflection

Tṛṣṇā-mātra-ātmakaḥ bandhaḥ, bondage is composed of nothing but thirst, is one of the tightest single-sentence definitions in the entire text — Ashtavakra strips away every possible cause of bondage except one, refusing karma, past lives, cosmic ignorance, or any other explanatory apparatus a full pass at the philosophical apparatus he inherits might offer, and names tṛṣṇā, thirst, alone as the entire structure. A retired railway officer in Jabalpur, asked by his grandson what finally made his retirement peaceful after a restless first two years, says only that he stopped wanting the phone to ring with new responsibility — nothing else in his life changed, no possession was added or removed, and yet the daily tuṣṭi, contentment, described in the verse's final phrase, prāptituṣṭir muhurmuhuḥ, contentment with whatever is obtained, again and again, arrived once the specific wanting stopped.

Verse 5

kā bubhutsā tathāpi tethe desire to know as desireself undermining teachingavidyā api na kiñcitbubhutsā equals bubhukṣā

त्वमेकश्चेतनः शुद्धो जडं विश्वमसत्तथा। अविद्यापि न किंचित्सा का बुभुत्सा तथापि ते॥१०-५॥

tvamekaścetanaḥ śuddho jaḍaṁ viśvamasattathā| avidyāpi na kiṁcitsā kā bubhutsā tathāpi te ||10-5||

You alone are conscious and pure; the universe is inert and, likewise, unreal. Even ignorance is nothing at all — so what, even so, is this desire to know that you still carry?

Modern Reflection

This verse turns Ashtavakra's teaching back on the seeker's own posture of seeking. Having spent nine chapters establishing that the self is pure consciousness and the world an appearance, the verse's final question, kā bubhutsā tathāpi te, what is this desire-to-know that you still have, catches the listener in the act of still wanting more explanation, more clarity, another verse. A researcher in Bengaluru who has spent fifteen years chasing a single unresolved question in her field, brilliant, respected, and privately exhausted, recognizes the trap the verse names: not that her question was wrong, but that the wanting-to-know itself, bubhutsā, had quietly become another form of tṛṣṇā, thirst, indistinguishable in structure from wanting wealth or love, however elevated its object. The verse does not tell her to stop researching. It asks whether the research can continue without the specific hunger underneath it.

Verse 6

rājyaṁ sutāḥ kalatrāṇithe inventory already lostjanmani janmaniattachment never prevented lossdirect address to janaka

राज्यं सुताः कलत्राणि शरीराणि सुखानि च। संसक्तस्यापि नष्टानि तव जन्मनि जन्मनि॥१०-६॥

rājyaṁ sutāḥ kalatrāṇi śarīrāṇi sukhāni ca| saṁsaktasyāpi naṣṭāni tava janmani janmani ||10-6||

Kingdoms, sons, wives, bodies, and pleasures — even though you were attached to them, they have been destroyed, birth after birth, of yours.

Modern Reflection

Ashtavakra addresses King Janaka directly with a term-by-term inventory, rājyaṁ sutāḥ kalatrāṇi śarīrāṇi sukhāni, kingdom, sons, wives, bodies, pleasures, and states flatly that all of it has already been lost, repeatedly, janmani janmani, birth after birth, despite attachment each time. A grieving mother in Chandigarh who has lost a child is not offered by this verse a denial of her grief, but a wider frame: the verse assumes, matter-of-factly, that this catastrophic loss has already happened to her, uncountable times, across a beginningless series of lives, and that her attachment each time did nothing to prevent it. The verse is unusually blunt even by this text's standards — it does not console with the idea that loss can be avoided through better management or devotion, only that it is universal, repeated, and never once stopped by saṃsakti, attachment, regardless of how fierce.

Verse 7

alam arthena kāmenasukṛta karma also failssaṁsāra kāntāre wildernessmerit accumulation questionedescalating triad

अलमर्थेन कामेन सुकृतेनापि कर्मणा। एभ्यः संसारकान्तारे न विश्रान्तमभून् मनः॥१०-७॥

alamarthena kāmena sukṛtenāpi karmaṇā| ebhyaḥ saṁsārakāntāre na viśrāntamabhūn manaḥ ||10-7||

Enough of wealth, of desire, even of meritorious action — from these, in the wilderness of saṃsāra, the mind has never found rest.

Modern Reflection

Saṃsāra-kāntāre, in the wilderness or dense forest of saṃsāra, is a vivid geographical image — kāntāra specifically denotes a trackless, difficult forest, not a garden or a cultivated field, the kind a traveler could genuinely get lost and exhausted in. Ashtavakra's list of what has failed to provide rest there is deliberately escalating: artha, wealth, kāma, desire, and then, more surprisingly, sukṛta karma, even meritorious action, good deeds, religious merit. A social worker in Pune who has spent thirty years in genuinely selfless service, running a shelter, funding scholarships, never once profiting personally, admits in a rare unguarded moment that even this good work has never once delivered the settledness she assumed accumulated merit would eventually produce. The verse's alam, enough, addressed to all three categories including the most respectable one, names her exhaustion precisely: not moral failure, but the discovery that no category of doing, however virtuous, was ever the kind of thing rest could come from.

Verse 8

kāyena manasā girātrikaraṇa three instrumentsuparamyatām let it ceasecompulsive doing exhaustedchapter ten closing

कृतं न कति जन्मानि कायेन मनसा गिरा। दुःखमायासदं कर्म तदद्याप्युपरम्यताम्॥१०-८॥

kṛtaṁ na kati janmāni kāyena manasā girā| duḥkhamāyāsadaṁ karma tadadyāpyuparamyatām ||10-8||

In how many births has painful, exhausting action, by body, mind, and speech, not already been done? Let that, at last, today, come to rest.

Modern Reflection

The chapter's closing verse is, uniquely for this text, weary in tone rather than analytical — kāyena manasā girā, by body, mind, and speech, the three standard instruments of action in Indian ethical thought, have been enacting duḥkham āyāsadam karma, painful and exhausting action, across countless births, and the verse's final word, uparamyatām, let it cease, is a passive imperative, almost a sigh rather than a command. A construction supervisor in Pune, sixty years old, still rising before dawn out of habit rather than necessity, still mentally rehearsing arguments with subcontractors he no longer employs, recognizes in this verse something his own body already knows: that the compulsion to keep acting, striving, correcting, has outlived any actual requirement for it. Tad adyāpi, let that, even today, finally, carries the tone of someone permitting themselves, after a very long time, to simply stop.

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