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

20 versesChapter 15

Verses · श्लोक

Verse 1

yathā tathā upadeśenasattva buddhi samkhya borrowingreadiness over teaching qualityājīvam api jijñāsuḥchapter fifteen opening

अष्टावक्र उवाच ॥ यथातथोपदेशेन कृतार्थः सत्त्वबुद्धिमान्। आजीवमपि जिज्ञासुः परस्तत्र विमुह्यति॥१५-१॥

aṣṭāvakra uvāca || yathātathopadeśena kṛtārthaḥ sattvabuddhimān| ājīvamapi jijñāsuḥ parastatra vimuhyati ||15-1||

Ashtavakra said: By teaching given in whatever manner, one whose intellect is of good quality becomes fulfilled, while another, even inquiring his whole life long, remains confused by that very same teaching.

Modern Reflection

This opening verse of the text's longest chapter is a blunt observation about readiness rather than a teaching in itself: yathā-tathā-upadeśena, by instruction given in whatever manner, however casually or imperfectly delivered, sattva-buddhimān, one whose intellect is of clear, good quality, becomes kṛtārtha, fulfilled, immediately — while another person, jijñāsuḥ, genuinely inquiring, ājīvam api, even for an entire lifetime, remains vimuhyati, confused, by the very same teaching. A veteran meditation teacher in Bodh Gaya who has given the identical short talk on non-attachment hundreds of times over decades has watched it land instantly and completely for a first-time visitor while a monk who has heard essentially the same point explained a hundred different ways over forty years still cannot quite grasp it. The verse is not cruel about this difference; it simply names sattva-buddhi, the specific clarity or purity of intellect (a technical Samkhya term for the guna, quality, of lucidity) as the actual variable, more decisive than the sophistication of the teaching itself.

Verse 2THE FAMOUS one-line definition of bondage and liberation — followed by 'now do as you wish'

mokṣo viṣaya vairasyaṃthe single axis of bondage and liberationyathecchasi tathā kuruteaching terminates its own authorityrasa borrowed from poetics

मोक्षो विषयवैरस्यं बन्धो वैषयिको रसः। एतावदेव विज्ञानं यथेच्छसि तथा कुरु॥१५-२॥

mokṣo viṣayavairasyaṁ bandho vaiṣayiko rasaḥ| etāvadeva vijñānaṁ yathecchasi tathā kuru ||15-2||

Liberation is distaste for sense-objects; bondage is relish for sense-objects. This alone is the whole of true knowledge — now do as you wish.

Modern Reflection

This is among the most quoted verses in all of Ashtavakra Gita, prized for its almost shocking brevity and its startling final clause: yathecchasi tathā kuru, as you wish, so act. Having reduced the entire distinction between bandha, bondage, and mokṣa, liberation, to a single axis, rasa or its absence, relish for sense-objects versus distaste for them, Ashtavakra simply stops teaching and hands the decision entirely to the listener. A young monk in Rishikesh, expecting a rulebook of do's and don'ts from his teacher, is instead handed exactly this verse and told nothing further — the teacher's silence after reciting it is, according to those who study under him, more instructive than any elaboration would be. The verse refuses to become another prescription; having named the actual mechanism, vaiṣayika rasa, taste for sense-objects, as the entirety of what bondage is, it declines to also become one more thing to obey.

Verse 3

vāgmi prājña mahodyogaṃthe cost of tattva bodhamūka jaḍa alasam unflattering honestybubhukṣubhiḥ avoiding the knowledgenot evangelistic

वाग्मिप्राज्ञमहोद्योगं जनं मूकजडालसं। करोति तत्त्वबोधोऽयमतस्त्यक्तो बुभुक्षभिः॥१५-३॥

vāgmiprājñamahodyogaṁ janaṁ mūkajaḍālasaṁ| karoti tattvabodho'yamatastyakto bubhukṣabhiḥ ||15-3||

This knowledge of ultimate truth turns a person who is [otherwise] eloquent, wise, and greatly industrious, into one mute, inert, and inactive — and therefore it is avoided by those who still wish to enjoy worldly life.

Modern Reflection

This verse offers an unusually honest, almost wry warning: tattva-bodha, direct knowledge of ultimate reality, can render a formerly vāgmi-prājña-mahodyoga, eloquent, wise, and greatly industrious person, into someone mūka-jaḍa-alasam, mute, inert, and inactive-seeming — and Ashtavakra names this, without apology, as the actual reason bubhukṣubhiḥ, those who still wish to enjoy worldly pleasures and achievements, tyaktaḥ, avoid this knowledge altogether. A brilliant young civil servant in Delhi, widely admired for his sharp policy analysis and tireless work ethic, tells a mentor privately that he deliberately avoids reading further into Vedanta texts he finds himself drawn to, because he suspects, correctly according to this verse, that genuine absorption in that knowledge would cost him precisely the ambitious edge his career depends on. The verse does not argue he is wrong to avoid it; it simply names the trade honestly, refusing to pretend tattva-bodha is compatible with unchanged worldly ambition.

Verse 4

fourfold denial deha bhoktā kartācit rūpaḥ sadā sākṣīsukhaṁ cara continued activitypuruṣa mistaken identificationnot withdrawal but unobstructed movement

न त्वं देहो न ते देहो भोक्ता कर्ता न वा भवान्। चिद्रूपोऽसि सदा साक्षी निरपेक्षः सुखं चर॥१५-४॥

na tvaṁ deho na te deho bhoktā kartā na vā bhavān| cidrūpo'si sadā sākṣī nirapekṣaḥ sukhaṁ cara ||15-4||

You are not the body, the body is not yours, nor are you the enjoyer or the doer. You are, always, of the form of consciousness, the witness. Unconditioned, move about happily.

Modern Reflection

This verse compresses the double-negation seen earlier in verse 104 (nāhaṁ deho na me dehaḥ) into a fourfold denial addressed directly to the listener: not the body, not the body's owner, not bhoktā, the enjoyer of experience, not kartā, the doer of action. A concert violinist in Mumbai, mid-performance, describes the rare nights when playing feels effortless as moments when there is simply music happening, with no separately locatable enjoyer savoring the performance and no separately locatable doer straining to execute it — the phrase sukhaṃ cara, move about happily, matches exactly what she reports afterward: not stillness, but unimpeded, natural movement through the piece, cit-rūpaḥ, in the very form of the awareness that watched it happen, nirapekṣaḥ, without needing anything external to validate the experience.

Verse 5

rāga dveṣau mano dharmauna manaḥ te kadācanacraving as instrument property not verdictdharma as inherent characteristicwitness uncolored by mind

रागद्वेषौ मनोधर्मौ न मनस्ते कदाचन। निर्विकल्पोऽसि बोधात्मा निर्विकारः सुखं चर॥१५-५॥

rāgadveṣau manodharmau na manaste kadācana| nirvikalpo'si bodhātmā nirvikāraḥ sukhaṁ cara ||15-5||

Attraction and aversion are properties of the mind; the mind is never you. You are free of mental constructs, of the nature of pure awareness. Unchanging, move about happily.

Modern Reflection

Rāga-dveṣau mano-dharmau, attraction and aversion are functions of the mind, na manaḥ te, the mind is not you, offers a specific, practically useful reframe: the pull toward one thing and the push away from another are not personal failings or successes but simply what mind, as an instrument, does, the way heat is what fire does. A recovering gambler in Mumbai, in a support meeting, describes finally making progress not when he stopped feeling the pull of the casino, but when he started experiencing that pull as mano-dharma, a property of the instrument called mind, rather than as evidence about his own character or worth. This reframe, na manaḥ te, the mind is never you, does not eliminate rāga-dveṣa, attraction-aversion, but relocates the identity crisis it used to trigger — the pull is still noticed, but it stops being read as a verdict on who he is, and sukhaṃ cara, moving about happily, becomes possible even while the pull sometimes still arises.

Verse 6

sarva bhūteṣu ātmānam reprisednirahaṅkāraḥ nirmamaḥahaṅkāra mamatā linked pairinsight not separate disciplinepossessiveness dissolving

सर्वभूतेषु चात्मानं सर्वभूतानि चात्मनि। विज्ञाय निरहंकारो निर्ममस्त्वं सुखी भव॥१५-६॥

sarvabhūteṣu cātmānaṁ sarvabhūtāni cātmani| vijñāya nirahaṁkāro nirmamastvaṁ sukhī bhava ||15-6||

Seeing yourself in all beings, and all beings in yourself, having known this, free of ego, without any sense of mine-ness, be happy.

Modern Reflection

This verse names two consequences, nirahaṅkāraḥ, freedom from ego, and nirmamaḥ, freedom from the sense of mine-ness, as following directly from the reciprocal recognition already stated in verse 73 (sarvabhūteṣu ahaṁ sarvabhūtāni mayi) — but here the emphasis shifts specifically to ahaṅkāra, ego-construction, and mamatā, possessiveness, the two functions most responsible for ordinary suffering. A grandmother in a joint family in Patna, who spent decades fiercely guarding what belonged to her branch of the household against her sisters-in-law's branches, describes a late-life softening in which the boundaries between whose child, whose kitchen shelf, whose contribution to the family business, simply stopped mattering the way they once did — not from resignation, but from a genuine loosening of mamatā, mine-ness, that made the whole extended family feel, finally, like one undivided thing rather than competing territories.

Verse 7

vijvaraḥ bhava free of feverjvara as precise medical metaphorcit mūrte tender vocativeform of the formless paradoxtaraṅgā iva sāgare reprised

विश्वं स्फुरति यत्रेदं तरंगा इव सागरे। तत्त्वमेव न सन्देहश्चिन्मूर्ते विज्वरो भव॥१५-७॥

viśvaṁ sphurati yatredaṁ taraṁgā iva sāgare| tattvameva na sandehaścinmūrte vijvaro bhava ||15-7||

That in which this universe pulsates forth, like waves in an ocean — that you indeed are, without doubt. O embodiment of consciousness, become free of the fever of anxiety.

Modern Reflection

Vijvaraḥ bhava, become free of the fever, uses jvara, fever, as a precise medical metaphor for the anxious, agitated quality of ordinary unenlightened experience — not a poetic exaggeration but a specific diagnosis of a specific symptom. A physician in Lucknow, treating patients through a dengue outbreak, notices the parallel Ashtavakra draws is clinically exact: jvara, actual fever, produces a body that cannot settle, restless, aching in every position, catastrophizing slightly even about minor discomforts, exactly mirroring the mind's ordinary agitated state that the verse names as its target. Cit-mūrte, O embodiment of consciousness, addressed directly to the listener as though consciousness itself has taken a form to be spoken to, closes the verse's argument, taraṅgā iva sāgare, like waves in the ocean, with an unusually tender vocative, as though diagnosing the fever and simultaneously offering the cure in the same breath.

Verse 8THE FAMOUS tender address — have faith, my child, have faith

śraddhasva tāta śraddhasvadoubled repetition pedagogical wisdomtāta crosses social hierarchyśraddhā not blind belieftender address amid dense argument

श्रद्धस्व तात श्रद्धस्व नात्र मोहं कुरुष्व भोः। ज्ञानस्वरूपो भगवानात्मा त्वं प्रकृतेः परः॥१५-८॥

śraddhasva tāta śraddhasva nātra mohaṁ kuruṣva bhoḥ| jñānasvarūpo bhagavānātmā tvaṁ prakṛteḥ paraḥ ||15-8||

Have faith, my child, have faith. Do not entertain delusion about this. The Self, whose very nature is knowledge, the blessed one — you are that, beyond material nature.

Modern Reflection

The doubled imperative, śraddhasva tāta śraddhasva, have faith, my child, have faith, repeated twice with the tender address tāta, is one of the most affectionate moments in the entire text, standing out sharply against the chapter's otherwise dense philosophical argumentation. A father in Chennai, watching his adult daughter struggle through a period of genuine spiritual confusion after years of intellectually rigorous study that somehow left her feeling further from peace rather than closer, finds himself instinctively saying almost exactly this to her, twice, before she is ready to hear any further explanation, because he senses that what she needs at that specific moment is not one more argument but the simple reassurance that the effort has not been wasted. Ashtavakra's repetition, twice in immediate succession, is itself a small piece of pedagogical wisdom: some truths need to be said again before the first saying can land.

Verse 9

guṇaiḥ saṁveṣṭitaḥ dehaḥātmā na gantā nāgantābody in prakṛti self exemptkim enam anuśocasi pastoral questiongrief redirected not dismissed

गुणैः संवेष्टितो देहस्तिष्ठत्यायाति याति च। आत्मा न गंता नागंता किमेनमनुशोचसि॥१५-९॥

guṇaiḥ saṁveṣṭito dehastiṣṭhatyāyāti yāti ca| ātmā na gaṁtā nāgaṁtā kimenamanuśocasi ||15-9||

The body, enveloped by the three guṇas, remains, arrives, and departs. The Self is neither a goer nor a comer — why do you grieve over this?

Modern Reflection

Guṇaiḥ saṁveṣṭitaḥ dehaḥ, the body wrapped or enveloped by the guṇas (sattva, rajas, tamas, Samkhya's three fundamental qualities of material nature), locates the body firmly within prakṛti, the realm of change, birth, and death, while ātmā, the Self, is declared na gantā na āgantā, neither goer nor comer, entirely exempt from this coming-and-going. A hospice worker in Chennai, sitting with a family in the final hours of an elderly patient's life, notices how the family's grief seems to organize itself entirely around the body's departure, āyāti yāti, its coming and going, and gently offers, in her own words, something close to this verse's question: kim enam anuśocasi, why grieve over this. She is not asking them to feel nothing; she is pointing at what, specifically, the grief has attached itself to, and asking whether that attachment point was ever the right target.

Verse 10

kalpāntam vs adyaivawidest possible temporal merismcit mātra rūpiṇaḥprognosis reframedno extreme carries more weight

देहस्तिष्ठतु कल्पान्तं गच्छत्वद्यैव वा पुनः। क्व वृद्धिः क्व च वा हानिस्तव चिन्मात्ररूपिणः॥१५-१०॥

dehastiṣṭhatu kalpāntaṁ gacchatvadyaiva vā punaḥ| kva vṛddhiḥ kva ca vā hānistava cinmātrarūpiṇaḥ ||15-10||

Let the body remain until the end of the cosmic age, or let it depart this very day — where is increase, or where is loss, for you, whose form is pure consciousness alone?

Modern Reflection

Kalpāntam, until the end of the kalpa or cosmic age (a unit of time so vast Indian cosmology measures it in billions of years), placed against adyaiva, this very day, creates the widest possible temporal range within a single verse, and the point is that neither extreme changes the answer: kva vṛddhiḥ kva ca vā hāniḥ, where is increase, where is loss, for cit-mātra-rūpiṇaḥ, one whose form is pure consciousness alone. A cancer patient in Bengaluru, given a prognosis that could range anywhere from months to decades depending on treatment response, describes finding an odd steadiness not from hoping for the longer number but from noticing that neither number, examined honestly, actually changed anything about who she was beneath the diagnosis — the verse's radical symmetry, treating a lifespan of eons and a lifespan of one day as equally irrelevant to citta-svarūpa, the nature of consciousness, offered her something the prognosis conversation itself could not.

Verse 11

echo of verse 75role reversal teacher confirms studentnear verbatim structural quotationclosing a seventy verse circleconfirmation not new teaching

त्वय्यनंतमहांभोधौ विश्ववीचिः स्वभावतः। उदेतु वास्तमायातु न ते वृद्धिर्न वा क्षतिः॥१५-११॥

tvayyanaṁtamahāṁbhodhau viśvavīciḥ svabhāvataḥ| udetu vāstamāyātu na te vṛddhirna vā kṣatiḥ ||15-11||

In you, the shoreless great ocean, the wave of the universe, by its own nature, rises or subsides. Whether it rises or sets, there is for you neither gain nor loss.

Modern Reflection

This verse is a striking, deliberate echo of verse 75 (chapter seven), where Janaka first announced his own realization using almost identical words about himself. Here, in the reverse direction, it is Ashtavakra speaking the same formula to Janaka, tvayi, in you, as confirmation rather than as Janaka's own discovery — a small but structurally significant callback that closes a circle spanning nearly seventy verses of dialogue. A senior disciple in a lineage of Carnatic music, having independently arrived at an interpretation of a raga that took him years to develop, receives from his guru, unprompted, the exact same phrase he had privately used to describe his own breakthrough, and understands in that moment that his teacher was not merely agreeing but confirming something the teacher had recognized was already true in the student before the student spoke it aloud. Ashtavakra's repetition of Janaka's own chapter-seven declaration functions exactly this way: not new information, but validation delivered in the student's own original words, handed back as confirmation.

Verse 12

heya upādeya kalpanā returnsna bhinnam idam jagatontological route vs epistemological routeabheda non differencetāta tender vocative continues

तात चिन्मात्ररूपोऽसि न ते भिन्नमिदं जगत्। अतः कस्य कथं कुत्र हेयोपादेयकल्पना॥१५-१२॥

tāta cinmātrarūpo'si na te bhinnamidaṁ jagat| ataḥ kasya kathaṁ kutra heyopādeyakalpanā ||15-12||

My child, you are of the form of pure consciousness alone; this world is not different from you. Therefore, for whom, how, and where could the notion of what-to-reject and what-to-accept even arise?

Modern Reflection

This verse returns, for the second time within our range (compare verse 78's chapter-seven closing use), to the heya-upādeya-kalpanā formula, the notion of what-to-reject and what-to-accept, but now grounds the denial differently: not on the world being an illusion (indrajāla) as in chapter seven, but on the world being na bhinnam, not different, from the listener himself. A textile merchant in Varanasi who has spent a lifetime carefully grading silk as first-quality or defective, accept or reject, describes an odd moment near retirement when handling a particularly flawed bolt of cloth, he found himself unable to locate the boundary between the cloth's flaw and his own judging mind that named it a flaw — both seemed, in that specific moment, to be arising from the same undivided awareness, making the entire accept-reject apparatus feel, briefly, like a distinction drawn within a single continuous fabric rather than between two separate things.

Verse 13

cit ākāśa space of consciousnessākāśa contains without being alteredamale avyaye śānteascending subtlety janma karma ahaṅkāravastness and unmoved containing

एकस्मिन्नव्यये शान्ते चिदाकाशेऽमले त्वयि। कुतो जन्म कुतो कर्म कुतोऽहंकार एव च॥१५-१३॥

ekasminnavyaye śānte cidākāśe'male tvayi| kuto janma kuto karma kuto'haṁkāra eva ca ||15-13||

In you, the one, imperishable, peaceful, stainless space of consciousness — whence could birth arise, whence action, whence even the sense of ego?

Modern Reflection

Cit-ākāśa, the space of consciousness, is a striking spatial metaphor: ākāśa, space or sky, is in classical physics the most subtle and all-pervading of the five elements, containing everything without being altered by anything it contains, and Ashtavakra applies this exact quality to consciousness itself. A telescope operator at an observatory in Nainital, spending nights watching light that left its source millions of years ago, describes a specific feeling of vastness that comes not from the stars themselves but from the sky's capacity to hold all of them, unchanged by any of it, moving or not moving, existing or having already died — and finds in that specific felt sense a genuine, if unexpected, resonance with what this verse is pointing at: amale, stainless, avyaye, imperishable, a space in which janma, birth, and karma, action, and even ahaṅkāra, ego, can arise and pass without the space itself ever being implicated.

Verse 14THE FAMOUS golden ornament simile — bracelet, armlet, anklet, all appear from the one gold

kaṭaka aṅgada anūpuramthe golden ornament similenāma rūpa and underlying substancechandogya upanishad parallelfamous advaita illustration

यत्त्वं पश्यसि तत्रैकस्त्वमेव प्रतिभाससे। किं पृथक् भासते स्वर्णात् कटकांगदनूपुरम्॥१५-१४॥

yattvaṁ paśyasi tatraikastvameva pratibhāsase| kiṁ pṛthak bhāsate svarṇāt kaṭakāṁgadanūpuram ||15-14||

Wherever you look, there you alone appear, as the one reality. Does a bracelet, an armlet, or an anklet appear separate from the gold [they are made of]?

Modern Reflection

This is one of the most celebrated similes in all of Advaita literature, and among the most visually concrete images in Ashtavakra Gita: kaṭaka, a bracelet, aṅgada, an armlet, and anūpura, an anklet, are three differently named, differently shaped, differently worn ornaments — yet none of them is anything other than svarṇa, gold, differently formed. A goldsmith in Jaipur, melting down an old bracelet to recast it as a new pair of earrings for a wedding order, watches the specific shape called 'bracelet' disappear entirely into molten metal that is, for a few minutes, no particular shape at all, before it becomes 'earrings' — and remarks to his apprentice that the gold itself never once stopped being gold throughout the entire transformation, only the name and the shape changed. Ashtavakra's verse applies this exact process to the self: yat tvaṁ paśyasi tatra ekas tvam eva pratibhāsase, wherever you look, there you alone appear — every named, shaped, differently-experienced object of perception is the one consciousness wearing a different form, the way gold wears the form of a bracelet or an anklet without ceasing, for even an instant, to be gold.

Verse 15THE FAMOUS verse — abandon the division of 'this is I' and 'this is not I', all is the Self

ayaṁ so 'ham ayaṁ nāhamabandoning the division itselfsarvam ātmā mahāvākya parallelniḥsaṅkalpaḥ not even holding this teachingchunk closing verse

अयं सोऽहमयं नाहं विभागमिति संत्यज। सर्वमात्मेति निश्चित्य निःसङ्कल्पः सुखी भव॥१५-१५॥

ayaṁ so'hamayaṁ nāhaṁ vibhāgamiti saṁtyaja| sarvamātmeti niścitya niḥsaṅkalpaḥ sukhī bhava ||15-15||

'This is I,' 'this is not I' — abandon this very division. Having ascertained that everything is the Self, free of all mental constructs, be happy.

Modern Reflection

This is the closing verse of our chunk, and one of the most quoted single lines from the entire text: ayaṁ so'ham ayaṁ nāham, this is I, this is not I, names the most basic operation the mind performs continuously, drawing a boundary between self and not-self across every object, person, and thought encountered. Ashtavakra's instruction is not to redraw the boundary more accurately but santyaja, to abandon the very act of drawing it, vibhāgam, the division itself, regardless of where the line was placed. A meditation teacher in Kerala, asked by a student how to know what truly belongs to the self and what does not, a question the student has been struggling with for years across therapy and spiritual practice alike, reads this verse aloud and simply stops talking, letting the silence make the point the verse itself makes: the question was never going to be answered correctly, because sarvam ātmā, everything is the Self, dissolves the presupposition that a correct line could be found at all. Niḥsaṅkalpaḥ, free of all mental resolve or constructed intention, sukhī bhava, be happy, closes both the verse and, in effect, the entire section of teaching our chunk covers, on the simplest possible imperative.

Verse 16

paramārthataḥno bound no freeremoving the categorytvam ekaḥclosing move

तवैवाज्ञानतो विश्वं त्वमेकः परमार्थतः। त्वत्तोऽन्यो नास्ति संसारी नासंसारी च कश्चन॥१५-१६॥

tavaivājñānato viśvaṃ tvamekaḥ paramārthataḥ| tvatto'nyo nāsti saṃsārī nāsaṃsārī ca kaścana||15-16||

The world appears only because of your own ignorance; in ultimate reality you alone exist. There is no one other than you, whether bound to samsara or free of it.

Modern Reflection

The verse works by removing a category, not by adding one. It does not say 'you are free, others are bound.' It says the very pair - bound person, free person - does not exist apart from the one consciousness doing the imagining. In a Delhi joint family, an aunt spends a lifetime sorting relatives into categories: who is settled, who is struggling, who has 'made it.' Ashtavakra's verse dissolves the sorting itself. The word saṃsārī is not a type of person here; it is a role assigned by ajñāna, ignorance, the way a single actor plays every part in a one-man show. When the ignorance lifts, the cast list does not shrink from many to one hero - it turns out there was never more than one actor, and asking who among the crowd was really free was already the wrong question.

Verse 17

sphūrti mātraḥmere flashing forththe mātra suffixnirvāsanaḥno residue

भ्रान्तिमात्रमिदं विश्वं न किंचिदिति निश्चयी। निर्वासनः स्फूर्तिमात्रो न किंचिदिव शाम्यति॥१५-१७॥

bhrāntimātramidaṃ viśvaṃ na kiṃciditi niścayī| nirvāsanaḥ sphūrtimātro na kiṃcidiva śāmyati||15-17||

This universe is mere illusion, nothing whatsoever. One who is certain of this, free of latent desire, pure manifestation itself, rests as if there were nothing at all.

Modern Reflection

Sphūrti-mātraḥ, 'mere flashing-forth,' is the verse's most interesting word. It does not describe the liberated person as still or inert; it describes them as pure flash, pure occurrence, like light without a lamp fixed behind it. Think of a classical dancer between two mudras, the hand already gone from one shape and not yet arrived at the next - for that instant there is motion with no object moving anywhere. A Chennai grandmother watching a Bharatanatyam recital once said the best dancers 'disappear into the gesture.' That disappearance is what nirvāsanaḥ, free of vāsanā, of the residue that makes a thing 'mine,' points toward. The world is not abolished by this verse. It is simply seen as flash without residue, the way the dancer's hand leaves no mark on the air it moved through.

Verse 18

bhavāmbhodhauocean of becomingkṛtya kṛtyaḥthree tenses collapsedno bondage no moksha

एक एव भवांभोधावासीदस्ति भविष्यति। न ते बन्धोऽस्ति मोक्षो वा कृत्यकृत्यः सुखं चर॥१५-१८॥

eka eva bhavāṃbhodhāvāsīdasti bhaviṣyati| na te bandho'sti mokṣo vā kṛtyakṛtyaḥ sukhaṃ cara||15-18||

You alone have been, are, and will be in this ocean of existence. You have neither bondage nor liberation. Having done all that needs doing, wander happily.

Modern Reflection

Bhavāmbhodhau, 'in the ocean of becoming,' is a stock metaphor in Vedanta, but Ashtavakra uses it against its usual grain. Most texts describe the ocean as something to cross, with the sage as a swimmer or the guru as a boat. Here the addressee is not on the ocean, in it, or crossing it - he is the only water there has ever been in it. A Kerala fisherman does not think of the backwaters as separate from himself when he has worked them for fifty years; his sense of the tide's rhythm is not knowledge about water, it has become continuous with him. The verse pushes further than that identification, though: it says there was never a fisherman apart from the water to begin with, three tenses running through one unbroken presence, past, present, future collapsing into a single ekaḥ eva, 'one alone.'

Verse 19

cinmayasaṅkalpa vikalpathe oscillating mindānanda vigrahealready yours

मा सङ्कल्पविकल्पाभ्यां चित्तं क्षोभय चिन्मय। उपशाम्य सुखं तिष्ठ स्वात्मन्यानन्दविग्रहे॥१५-१९॥

mā saṅkalpavikalpābhyāṃ cittaṃ kṣobhaya cinmaya| upaśāmya sukhaṃ tiṣṭha svātmanyānandavigrahe||15-19||

O one of the nature of consciousness, do not agitate the mind with resolve and doubt. Having become still, abide happily in your own self, whose very form is bliss.

Modern Reflection

Saṅkalpa-vikalpa, resolve and doubt, is a fixed Vedantic pair naming the mind's basic oscillation: deciding, then undeciding, wanting, then doubting the want. A shopkeeper in Varanasi closing up for the night runs the day's transactions back through his head - should have priced that bolt of cloth higher, should not have trusted that customer's credit - and the running back-and-forth is exactly saṅkalpa-vikalpa in its most ordinary form. The verse does not tell him to resolve the accounts correctly or stop doing business. It addresses him as cinmaya, 'made of consciousness,' a vocative that already assumes the very identity the rest of the verse only asks him to stop obscuring. Ānanda-vigrahe, 'in the bliss-bodied one,' names the self he is being told to rest in - not achieve, since it is grammatically already his own (sva-ātmani).

Verse 20THE FAMOUS closing line of Chapter 15 - what will you gain by deliberating?

kiṃ vimṛśya kariṣyasithe famous closing linebeyond meditationvimṛśyarecognition not achievement

त्यजैव ध्यानं सर्वत्र मा किंचिद् हृदि धारय। आत्मा त्वं मुक्त एवासि किं विमृश्य करिष्यसि॥१५-२०॥

tyajaiva dhyānaṃ sarvatra mā kiṃcid hṛdi dhāraya| ātmā tvaṃ mukta evāsi kiṃ vimṛśya kariṣyasi||15-20||

Abandon meditation altogether; hold nothing at all in your heart. You are the Self, already free - what will you accomplish by pondering further?

Modern Reflection

This is one of the most quoted single lines in the whole text: kiṃ vimṛśya kariṣyasi, 'what will you accomplish by deliberating?' It closes Chapter 15 by pulling the rug out from under the entire chapter that preceded it - twenty verses of upadeśa, instruction, ending with the instruction to stop even meditating on the instruction. An IIT-Bombay professor advising a doctoral student who has been redrafting a chapter's introduction for the eighth month might eventually say something structurally identical: at some point revision stops improving the work and starts avoiding its completion. Ashtavakra's target is subtler - not a thesis but the self, already whole, that dhyāna keeps treating as a project still under construction. The verse is not anti-intellectual; it is aimed precisely at the moment when reflection becomes a way of postponing what reflection was meant to reveal.

Previous chapterChapter 14 Next chapterChapter 16

Back to Ashtavakra Gita - The Song of Self-Realization Gita Universe