ASTAVAKRA GITA - 2

II

Janaka said:

1. Truly I am spotless and at peace, the awareness beyond natural causality. All this time I have been afflicted by delusion.

2. As I alone give light to this body, so do I enlighten the world. As a result the whole world is mine, and, alternatively, nothing is.

3. So now abandoning the body and everything else, suddenly somehow my true self becomes apparent.

4. Just as waves, foam and bubbles are not different from water, so all this which has emanated from oneself, is no other than oneself.

5. Just as cloth when examined is found to be just thread, so when all this is analysed it is found to be no other than oneself.

6. Just as the sugar produced from the juice of the sugarcane is permeated with the same taste, so all this, produced out of me, is completely permeated with me.

7. From ignorance of oneself, the world appears, and by knowledge of oneself it appears no longer. From ignorance of the rope a snake appears, and by knowledge of the rope the snake appears no longer.

8. Shining is my essential nature, and I am nothing over and beyond that. When the world shines forth, it is simply me that is shining forth.

9. All this appears in me, imagined, due to ignorance, just as a snake appears in the rope, just as the mirage of water in the sunlight, and just as silver in mother of pearl.

10. All this, which has originated out of me, is resolved back into me too, like a gourd back into soil, a wave into water, and a bracelet into gold.

11. How wonderful I am! Glory to me, for whom there is no destruction, remaining even beyond the destruction of the world from Brahma down to the last blade of grass.

12. How wonderful I am! Glory to me, solitary! Even though with a body, I am neither going or coming anywhere; I abide forever, filling all that is.

13. How wonderful I am! Glory to me! There is no one so clever as me! I have borne all that is, forever, without even touching it with my body!

14. How wonderful I am! Glory to me! I possess nothing at all, and alternatively possess everything to which speech and mind can refer.

15. Knowledge, what is to be known, and the knower - these three do not exist in reality. I am the spotless reality in which they appear, spotted by ignorance.

16. Truly dualism is the root of suffering. There is no other remedy for it than the realisation that all this that one sees is unreal, and that I am the one stainless reality, consisting of consciousness.

17. I am pure awareness although through ignorance I have imagined myself to have additional attributes. By continually reflecting like this, my dwelling place is the Unimagined.

18. For me, here is neither bondage nor liberation. The illusion has lost its basis and ceased. Truly all this exists in me, though ultimately it does not even exist in me.

19. I have recognised that all this and my body are nothing, while my true self is nothing but pure consciousness- so what can the imagination work on now?

20. The body, heaven and hell, bondage and liberation, and fear too, all this is active imagination. What is there left to do for one whose very nature is consciousness?

21. Truly I do not see dualism even in a crowd of people. What pleasure should I have when it has turned into a wilderness?

22. I am not the body, nor is the body mine. I am not a living being. I am consciousness. It was my thirst for living that was my bondage.

23. Truly it is in the limitless ocean of myself, stimulated by the colourful waves of the worlds, that everything suddenly arises in the wind of consciousness.

24. It is in the limitless ocean of myself, that the wind of thought subsides; the trader-like living creatures’ world ark is now drydocked by lack of goods.

25. How wonderful it is that in the limitless ocean of myself the waves of living beings arise, collide, play and disappear, according to their natures.