ASTAVAKRA GITA - 3, 4

III

Ashtavakra said:

1. Knowing yourself as truly one and indestructible, how could a wise man like you- one possessing self-knowledge- feel any pleasure in acquiring wealth?

2. Truly, when one does not know oneself, one takes pleasure in the objects of mistaken perception, just as greed for its seeming silver arises in one who does not know mother-of-pearl for what it is.

3. All this wells up like waves in the sea. Recognising, I am That, why run around like someone in need?

4. After hearing of oneself as pure consciousness and the supremely beautiful, is one to go on lusting after sordid sensual objects?

5. When the sage has realised that one is oneself is in all beings, and all beings are in oneself, it is astonishing that the sense of individuality should be able to continue.

6. It is astonishing that a person who has reached the supreme non-dual state and is intent on the benefits of liberation should still be subject to lust and be held back by the desire to copulate.

7. It is astonishing that one already very debilitated, and knowing very well that sensual arousal is the enemy of knowledge should still eagerly hanker after concupiscence, even when approaching one’s last days.

8. It is astonishing that one who is unattached to the things of this world or the next, who discriminates between the permanent and the impermanent, and who longs for liberation, should still feel fear for liberation.

9. Whether feted or tormented, the wise person is always aware of the supreme self-nature and is neither expectant nor disappointed.

10. The great souled person sees even one’s own body in action as if it were someone else’s, so how then be disturbed by praise or blame?

11. Seeing this world as pure illusion, and devoid of any interest in it, how should the strong-minded person feel fear, even at the approach of death?

12. Who is to be compared to the great-souled person whose mind is free of desire, free of expectation and disappointment, and who has found satisfaction in self-knowledge?

13. How should a strong-minded person who knows that whatever is seen is by its very nature nothing, how then consider one thing to be grasped and another to be rejected?

14. For someone who has eliminated attachment, and who is free from dualism and from desire and from repulsion, for such a one an object that comes of itself is neither painful nor pleasurable.


IV

Ashtavakra said:

1. Certainly the wise person of self-knowledge, playing the game of worldly life, bears no resemblance whatever to the world’s bewildered beasts of burden.

2. Truly the one centered in mystic union feels no excitement even at being established in that state which all the gods from Indra down yearn for disconsolately.

3. He who has known That is untouched within by good deeds or bad, just as the sky is not touched by smoke, however much it may appear to be.

4. Who can prevent the great-souled person who has known this whole world as oneself from living as one pleases?

5. Of all the four categories of beings, from Brahma down to the dryest clump of grass, only the person of knowledge is capable of eliminating desire and aversion.

6. Rare is the person who knows oneself as the undivided Lord of the world; no fear occurs to one who lives the truth.