Part 4 - Ashtavakra Gita translated by John Richards

Ashtavakra said:

My son, you may recite or listen to countless scriptures, but you will not be established within until you can forget everything. 16.1

You may, as a learned man, indulge in wealth, activity, and meditation, but your mind will still long for that which is the cessation of desire, and beyond all goals. 16.2

Everyone is in pain because of their striving to achieve something, but noone realises it. By no more than this instruction, the fortunate one attains tranquillity. 16.3

Happiness belongs to noone but that supremely lazy man for whom even opening and closing his eyes is a bother. 16.4

When the mind is freed from such pairs of opposites as, "I have done this," and "I have not done that," it becomes indifferent to merit, wealth, sensuality and liberation. 16.5

One man is abstemious and averse to the senses, another is greedy and attached to them, but he who is free from both taking and rejecting is neither abstemious nor greedy. 16.6

So long as desire, the state of lack of discrimination, remains, the sense of revulsion and attraction will remain, which is the root and branch of samsara. 16.7

Desire springs from usage, and aversion from abstension, but the wise man is free from the pairs of opposites like a child, and becomes established. 16.8

The passionate man wants to eliminate samsara so as to avoid pain, but the dispassionate man is free from pain and feels no distress even in it. 16.9

He who is proud about even liberation or his own body, and feels them his own, is neither a seer nor a yogi. He is still just a sufferer.16.10

If even Shiva, Vishnu, or the lotus-born Brahma were your instructor, until you have forgotten everything you cannot be established within. 16.11


Ashtavakra said:

He who is content, with purified senses, and always enjoys solitude, has gained the fruit of knowledge and the fruit of the practice of yoga too. 17.1

The knower of truth is never distressed in this world, for the whole round world is full of himself alone. 17.2

None of these senses please a man who has found satisfaction within,just as Nimba leaves do not please the elephant that has acquired the taste for Sallaki leaves. 17.3

The man is rare who is not attached to the things he has enjoyed, and does not hanker after the things he has not enjoyed. 17.4

Those who desire pleasure and those who desire liberation are both found in samsara, but the great-souled man who desires neither pleasure nor liberation is rare indeed. 17.5

It is only the noble-minded who is free from attraction or repulsion to religion, wealth, sensuality, and life and death too. 17.6

He feels no desire for the elimination of all this, nor anger at its continuing, so the fortunate man lives happily with whatever sustinence presents itself. 17.7

Thus fulfilled through this knowledge, contented, and with the thinking mind emptied, he lives happily just seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, and tasting. 17.8

In him for whom the ocean of samsara has dried up, there is neither attachment or aversion. His gaze is vacant, his behaviour purposeless,and his senses inactive. 17.9

Surely the supreme state is everywhere for the liberated mind. He is neither awake nor asleep, and neither opens nor closes his eyes. 17.10

The liberated man is resplendent everywhere, free from all desires. Everywhere he appears self-possessed and pure of heart. 17.11

Seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, tasting, speaking, and walking about, the great-souled man who is freed from trying to achieve or avoid anything is free indeed. 17.12

The liberated man is free from desires everywhere. He neither blames, praises, rejoices, is disappointed, gives, nor takes. 17.13

When a great-souled one is unperturbed in mind, and equally self-possessed at either the sight of a woman inflamed with desire or at approaching death, he is truly liberated. 17.14

There is no distinction between pleasure and pain, man and woman, success and failure for the wise man who looks on everything as equal. 17.15

There is no aggression nor compassion, no pride nor humility, no wonder nor confusion for the man whose days of samsara are over. 17.16

The liberated man is not averse to the senses nor is he attached to them. He enjoys hinself continually with an unattached mind in both success and failure. 17.17

One established in the Absolute state with an empty mind does not know the alternatives of inner stillness and lack of inner stillness, and of good and evil. 17.18

A man free of "me" and "mine" and of a sense of responsibility, aware that "Nothing exists," with all desires extinguished within, does not act even in acting. 17.19

He whose thinking mind is dissolved achieves the indescribable state and is free from the mental display of delusion, dream, and ignorance. 17.20


Ashtavakra said:

Praise be to That by the awareness of which delusion itself becomes dream-like, to that which is pure happiness, peace, and light. 18.1

One may get all sorts of pleasure by the acquisition of various objects of enjoyment, but one cannot be happy except by the renunciation of everything. 18.2

How can there be happiness, for one who has been burnt inside by the blistering sun of the pain of thinking that there are things that still need doing, without the rain of the nectar of peace? 18.3

This existence is just imagination. It is nothing in reality, but there is no non-being for natures that know how to distinguish being from nonbeing. 18.4

The realm of one's self is not far away, nor can it be achieved by the addition of limitations to its nature. It is unimaginable, effortless, unchanging, and spotless. 18.5

By the simple elimination of delusion and the recognition of one's true nature, those whose vision is unclouded live free from sorrow. 18.6

Knowing everything as just imagination, and himself as eternally free, how should the wise man behave like a fool? 18.7

Knowing himself to be God, and being and non-being just imagination, what should the man free from desire learn, say, or do? 18.8

Considerations like "I am this" or "I am not this" are finished for the yogi who has gone silent realising "Everything is myself." 18.9

For the yogi who has found peace, there is no distraction or one-pointedness, no higher knowledge or ignorance, no pleasure and no pain. 18.10

The dominion of heaven or beggary, gain or loss, life among men or in the forest, these make no difference to a yogi whose nature it is to be free from distinctions. 18.11

There are no religious obligations, wealth, sensuality, or discrimination for a yogi free from such opposites as "I have done this," and "I have not done that." 18.12

There is nothing needing to be done or any attachment in his heart for the yogi liberated while still alive. Things things will last just to the end of life. 18.13

There is no delusion, world, meditation on That, or liberation for the pacified great soul. All these things are just the realm of imagination.18.14

He by whom all this is seen may well make out it doesn't exist, but what is the desireless one to do? Even in seeing it he does not see it. 18.15

He by whom the Supreme Brahma is seen may think "I am Brahma," but what is he to think who is without thought, and who sees no duality? 18.16