ASTAVAKRA GITA - 10, 11, 12

X

Ashtavakra said:

1. Abandoning desire, the enemy, along with gain, itself so full of loss, and the good deeds which are the cause of the other two - I practice indifference to everything.

2. I look on such things as friends, land, money, property, wife, and bequests as nothing but a a dream or a three or five-day conjuror’s show.

3. Wherever a desire occurs, I see samsara in it. Establishing myself in firm dispassion, I be free of passion and happy.

4. The essential nature of bondage is nothing other than desire, and its elimination is known as liberation. It is simply by not being attached to changing things that the everlasting joy of attainment is reached.

5. You are one, conscious and pure, while all this is just inert non-being. Ignorance itself is nothing, so what need have you of desire to understand?

6. Kingdoms, children, wives, bodies, pleasures - these have all been lost to you life after life, attached to them though you were.

7. Enough of wealth, sensuality and good deeds. In the forest of samsara the mind has never found satisfaction in these.

8. How many births have you not done hard and painful labour with body, mind and speech. Now at last stop!

XI

Ashtavakra said:

1. Unmoved and undistressed, realising now that being, non-being and transformation are of the very nature of things, one easily finds peace.

2. At peace, having shed all desires within, and realising that nothing exists here but the Lord, the Creator of all things, one is no longer attached to anything.

3. Realising that misfortune and fortune come in their turn from fate, one is contented, one’s senses under control, and one does not like or dislike.

4. Realising that pleasure and pain, birth and death are from fate, and that one’s desires cannot be achieved, one remains inactive, and even when acting does not get attached.

5. Realising that suffering arises from nothing other than thinking, dropping all desires one rids oneself of it, and is happy and at peace everywhere.

6. Realising ‘I am not the body, nor is the body mine; I am awareness,’ one attains the supreme state and no longer fritters over things done or undone.

7. Realising, ‘It is just me, from Brahma down to the last blade of grass,’ one becomes free from uncertainty, pure, at peace and unconcerned about what has been attained or not.

8. Realising that all this varied and wonderful world is nothing, one becomes pure receptivity, free from inclinations, and as if nothing existed, one finds peace.

XII

Janaka said:

1. First of all I was averse to physical activity, then to lengthy speech, and finally to thinking itself, which is why I am now established.

2. In the absence of delight in sound and the other senses, and by the fact that I myself am not an object of the senses, my mind is focused and free from distraction which is why I am now established.

3. Owing to the distraction of such things as wrong identification, one is driven to strive for mental stillness. Recognising this pattern I am now established.

4. By relinquishing the sense of rejection and acceptance, and with pleasure and disappointment ceasing today, so Brahmin, I am now established.

5. Life in a community, then going beyond such a state, meditation and the elimination of mind-made objects - by means of these I have seen my error, and I am now established.

6. Just as the performance of actions is due to ignorance, so their abandonment is too. By fully recognising this truth, I am now established.

7. Trying to think the unthinkable is unnatural to thought. Abandoning such a practice therefore, I am now established.

8. He who has achieved this has achieved the goal of life. He who is of such a nature has done what has to be done.