Textual context
‘Dispassion’ is the tenth chapter. In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, practice and dispassion walk side by side, yet Ashtavakra lets dispassion stand alone. Here no strength of practice is asked for; dispassion by itself is enough.
This same vision sounds again later in Ramakrishna Paramahansa’s effortless dispassion, where dispassion is the natural light of your own nature, something no effort ever earns.
Dispassion
Non-attachment · 8 shlokas
After disenchantment comes the widening of dispassion. In eight shlokas Ashtavakra speaks of an everyday release that descends from plain seeing, never from any philosophy.
Tradition counted dispassion as fivefold, the way Rupa Goswami laid it out in the Bhakti-rasamrita-sindhu. Ashtavakra’s dispassion stands apart from all five, because it holds at the level of your own nature, far below the surface of outward marks.
So far
After disenchantment, now dispassion. This is an easy freedom, never gloom.
The guru strikes straight at the student. First he tells you to abandon desire, that old enemy; then wealth, packed with ruin; and then the thing that startles you, dharma itself, the root cause of both, to be given up as well. For merit too sows the seed of the next indulgence. And it does not stop there, the command reaches all the way to renouncing the wish to be honored everywhere. Then he presses a small yardstick into your hand for measuring the world. Friends, fields, wealth, house, and family, look on all this fortune the way you would a dream of three or five days, a conjuror’s trick. Even eighty years of age, set on the scales of time, is a single moment.
Shlokas 1 · 2
विहाय वैरिणं काममर्थं चानर्थसंकुलम्।
धर्ममप्येतयोर्हेतुं सर्वत्रादरमुत्सृज॥
स्वप्नेन्द्रजालवत्पश्य दिनानि त्रीणि पञ्च वा।
मित्रक्षेत्रधनागारदारदायादिसम्पदः॥
Now Ashtavakra points to the root of the world. Wherever craving is, there the world is; learn to see it. The seeker who has left everything outside and sits in a meditation cell, if he keeps craving alive in there, is hauling the world along right there; and the craving-free man seated in the middle of the marketplace is free right where he sits. So take shelter in ripened dispassion, grow free of craving, and be happy. Then the guru unfolds a plain sutra. Bondage is nothing else, it is only the shape of craving; the ending of that craving is what we call moksha. And a turn hides inside this: from simply not clinging to the world, again and again, at every moment, that same contentment of having gained something keeps settling within.
Shlokas 3 · 4
यत्र यत्र भवेत्तृष्णा संसारं विद्धि तत्र वै।
प्रौढवैराग्यमाश्रित्य वीततृष्णः सुखी भव॥
तृष्णामात्रात्मको बन्धस्तन्नाशो मोक्ष उच्यते।
भवासंसक्तिमात्रेण प्राप्तितुष्टिर्मुहुर्मुहुः॥
Now the guru turns straight toward the student. You are one, you are consciousness, you are pure; this whole inert universe is unreal, and what they call ignorance is also nothing at all. To try to remove ignorance is much like taking it for real. So what is this appetite to know still more? The thirst to know becomes, in the end, the last obstacle; only being remains. And the guru opens a window onto memory. A kingdom, sons, wives, many bodies, and every pleasure, however tightly you may have been bound to them, all of it has perished birth after birth. Every birth brought the same list, every time it all slipped away, and every time the same illusion held that this one is the one that lasts.
Shlokas 5 · 6
त्वमेकश्चेतनः शुद्धो जडं विश्वमसत्तथा।
अविद्यापि न किञ्चित्सा का बुभुत्सा तथापि ते॥
राज्यं सुताः कलत्राणि शरीराणि सुखानि च।
संसक्तस्यापि नष्टानि तव जन्मनि जन्मनि॥
Now the chapter reaches its summit, as if the guru draws a deep breath after a long weariness. Enough now of wealth, of desire, and even of meritorious deeds; wandering after all of them in this forest of a world, the mind has never once found rest. Being good is also a doing, and every doing carries with it the next target of restlessness. Then the final sentence falls like a clear command, with none of the softness of advice. Through who knows how many births, the body, the mind, and speech have gone on with that painful, exhausting karma; today, right now, bring it to a halt. Not tomorrow, because tomorrow the same wheel starts turning again. Step out of doing and into being.
Shlokas 7 · 8
अलमर्थेन कामेन सुकृतेनापि कर्मणा।
एभ्यः संसारकान्तारे न विश्रान्तमभून्मनः॥
कृतं न कति जन्मानि कायेन मनसा गिरा।
दुःखमायासदं कर्म तदद्याप्युपरम्यताम्॥