The Ashtavakra Gita · Chapter 18: Liberation in Life

Ashtavakra begins with a bow, and he bows toward the one place where, the moment awareness wakes, the whole illusion scatters like a dream. That form of joy, that stillness, that radiance, stillness and radiance being two faces of a single state. Then he says something blunt and plain. Earn everything you can, gather countless pleasures, and still, without an inner renunciation of all of it, without the loosening of that grip called “mine,” happiness does not come down into you. The burden of duty keeps burning within like a sun, and without the nectar-stream of tranquility that alone quenches that fire, how is the inner self to grow cool. This world is only a matter of feeling, nothing at all in ultimate truth.

Now Ashtavakra arrives at the heart of the matter, the seed of the whole non-dual teaching. That station of the atman (self) is not far off anywhere, nor has it withdrawn behind any narrowing; it has already been attained from the start, free of alternatives, free of effort, free of change, without a stain. Let only the illusion lift and the true nature be accepted, and a person, freed of grief, grows radiant with a sight that has no veil across it. And once you have known that everything is imagination and that the atman has always been free and eternal, why would the steady one repeat any practice, like a child. Once “the atman is Brahman” is settled as certain, both being and non-being stand revealed as imagined, and for the desireless person nothing then remains to be known, nor spoken, nor done.

The yogi who has fallen silent, settled in the certainty that “all is the atman,” finds his every alternative of “this I am, this I am not” wearing thin. In the state of deep peace there is no distraction and no concentration, no excess of knowing and no dullness, no pleasure and no pain; every such pair falls away, and this is a state beyond all of them, lying past any practiced balance. A royal throne or a beggar’s bowl, gain or loss, a crowd or the forest, none of it makes any difference to the yogi whose nature is free of alternatives. And for the one released from the pairs of “this was done, this was not done,” where is dharma, where is wealth, where is desire, and where even is discernment.

Here, for the first time, comes the word that is the very life of this chapter: jivanmukta, liberated while alive. For such a yogi no task remains worth doing, and no attachment to any single thing remains in the heart; the life that is simply running along is his natural way. For that great soul, at rest upon the boundary of all his resolves, where is delusion, where is the world, where is meditation, and where even is liberation. Only one who has seen the world can renounce it by saying “this does not exist at all,” while the one in whom no craving is left does not see even while seeing. And only one who has seen the supreme Brahman can think “I am Brahman,” while the one who sees nothing else at all, free of every care, has no second thing to contemplate.

The one who has seen his own distraction within is the one who tries to check it, yet the large-hearted person is never distracted in the first place, so when nothing is left to gain, what would he even check. The steady one runs contrary to the whole world within, and still, on the outside, behaves exactly like the world, and in himself he sees no absorption, no distraction, and no stain. Free of being and non-being, content, empty of craving, that knower does nothing even while, in the eyes of the world, he acts. Whether he stays in activity or in withdrawal, no grip binds the steady one; doing whatever comes before him, he settles down in ease.

Free of craving, resting on no support, unbound and released, this person drifts like a dry leaf on the wind of past impressions, carried wherever the wind takes him, offering no resistance anywhere. For the one for whom the world has ceased to be, there is no elation anywhere and no gloom anywhere; his mind forever cool, he stays radiant as though he had no body at all. No wish to give anything up anywhere, no fear of ruin anywhere, dwelling in the atman alone, that steady one grows ever cooler within, ever more clear. The one whose mind is empty by its very nature and who does his work as effortlessly as a child is touched by neither honor nor insult.

“This action was done by the body, not by me in my pure nature,” the one who stays settled in that conviction does nothing even while acting. On the surface he behaves as though he holds nothing to be true, and yet he is no fool; this very one is the jivanmukta, happy, rich in grace, resplendent even while living in the world. Worn out by a crowd of thoughts, the steady one has now come and sat down in rest; now he does not imagine, nor take birth, nor hear, nor see, and the very chain of rebirth has snapped. It is not from the absence of absorption, nor from the absence of distraction; he is no longer a seeker of liberation nor anything else, and knowing the imagined to be imagined, that noble one simply abides as Brahman itself.

In the one who has ego seated within, even not-doing turns into doing, while for the steady one who is free of ego, nothing has been done and nothing left undone. Such is the mind of the liberated: not agitated, not satisfied, a non-doer, free of any tremor, free of hope and free of doubt. His mind does not rise to fix itself in meditation nor in any effort, and still, with no occasion for it, he stays as though “I am in meditation.” The dull-witted one, meanwhile, fares the opposite way: hearing the truth in its real form, he sinks all the deeper into confusion or shrinks into hesitation, and only some rare undeluded one looks, on the surface, as if he were deluded.

The deluded keep practicing concentration and restraint of the mind endlessly, while the steady ones rest in their own station as though asleep, seeing no duty at all before them. With effort or without effort, the deluded one finds no peace, while the wise one grows peaceful by the mere certainty of the truth. That atman, pure, awake, dear, full, beyond all the spread of phenomena, and free of every ailment, the people tangled up in practice simply never come to know. The deeply deluded one does not reach moksha through action, leaning on practice, while the blessed one, set free by pure knowing alone, abides unchanging.

The deluded one does not reach Brahman because he wants to “become” something, while the steady one, even without wanting it, comes to share in the very nature of the supreme Brahman. It is the deluded, without ground and tangled in their grasping, who keep nursing the world along, and the wise cut away the very root of this whole calamity. The deluded one does not find peace because he strives to become peaceful, while the steady one, having settled the truth as certain, stays forever peaceful of mind. What sight of the atman is there for the one who clings to the support of some seen object; the steady ones see the imperishable atman alone, never those separate, shifting things.

Restraint of the mind is for that deeply deluded one who fashions some bondage within; for the steady one who delights in himself alone, restraint comes spontaneously and is never contrived. One person contemplates being, another “there is nothing,” and another the absence of both, yet the one who has passed beyond all of these is the truly untroubled one. Even the wrong-headed contemplate the pure, non-dual atman, but caught fast in delusion they never come to know it and stay restless their whole life. The seeker’s intellect does not stand at all without one support or another, while the intellect of the liberated one stays forever unsupported and free of desire.

Now Ashtavakra sketches two pictures. On one side, people frightened at the sight of the tigers that are the sense-objects go looking for cover and dart at once into the hollow of samadhi, to perfect restraint and concentration. On the other side, seeing the craving-free one silent as a lion, the elephants that are the sense-objects cannot even flee; instead they turn flatterers and take up his service. The one who is without misgiving and steady of mind does not so much as hold the scripture of liberation in his hand; seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, eating, doing all of it, he simply lives in ease. The one whose intellect has turned pure and untroubled from merely hearing the truth sees neither right conduct, nor wrong conduct, nor indifference.

Whatever comes before him to be done, the simple-hearted one simply does it, good or ill, and his effort is as natural as a child’s. Then he makes a declaration of freedom: from freedom comes happiness, from freedom the supreme, from freedom peace, from freedom alone the highest station. When the atman accepts that it is neither the doer nor the enjoyer, in that moment all the movements of the mind wear thin and fall away. The state of the steady one may look unruly and unadorned, and still it shines, while the peace of the deluded one, whose mind is full of longing, is contrived and false.

The steady ones, free of imagination, unbound, their intellect released, are sometimes seen reveling in great pleasures, sometimes seated in mountain caves, and in both places they are the same. A knower of the Vedas, a deity, a place of pilgrimage, a woman, a king, or someone dear: seeing all of these and honoring them, no craving rises in the heart of the steady one. Servants, sons, wife, daughter’s sons, the people of his clan, whether they laugh at him or heap scorn on him, the yogi is not warped in the least. He is not satisfied even while he looks satisfied, not pained even while he looks pained, and these strange states of his only men of the same kind can understand.

This sense of duty is what worldly existence really is, and the knowers do not look upon this duty-bound way at all; they become empty of shape, formless, changeless, and free of every ailment. The dull-minded one, even while doing nothing, stays agitated everywhere from the turmoil within, while the skillful one stays untroubled even while doing his work. Such a peaceful-minded person, even in daily affairs, sits in ease, sleeps in ease, comes and goes in ease, speaks and eats in ease. The one whom pain does not touch by his very nature, even while behaving like the world, stays unshaken as a great lake and, free of distress, shines.

Even the withdrawal of the deluded one turns into a fresh new activity within, while the very activity of the steady one yields the fruit of withdrawal. The renunciation of the deluded one usually shows itself against outer possessions, but for the one in whom even hope for the body has dissolved, where is attachment and where is detachment. The gaze of the deluded one stays forever caught in imagining and in the wish to un-imagine, while the gaze of the healthy one, free of both the thing to be imagined and the imagining, becomes as if it were sightlessness itself. For the sage who moves through all his undertakings desireless, like a child, no stain settles even while action goes on.

The blessed knower of the self is the very one who stays even amid all states of being, in whom no fever rises even while seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and eating. For him where is the world, where is appearance, where is the goal and where is the means; like the sky, he stays forever free of alternatives. Such a renouncer of every aim, resting in his own full nature of rasa, sunk in an unbroken and uncontrived samadhi, is the one who wins the true victory. What use is there in saying much: that noble one who has known the truth, past all longing for both enjoyment and liberation, stays everywhere, always, without relish.

From the great principle onward, this whole dual world is spread out by name alone, and once it is let go, no duty at all remains for pure awareness. The one who, having known the entire material illusion, turns away from it stays established as craving-free, formless, and free of alternatives. As though he had already reached absolute aloneness, such a blessed person, whose rising no one sees, becomes pure of intellect and does not see the done and undone deeds even while he sees them. The one who is detached hates the sense-objects, the one full of passion is drawn to them, and the one who is beyond both grasping and letting go is neither detached nor passionate.

As long as there is an inner impulse to give something up and to take something on, that itself remains the sprout of the tree that is worldly existence, and as long as longing is alive, no resting place is found for the state beyond thought. In activity, passion is born, and in withdrawal, aversion, while the steady one who is free of every pair stays beyond both, like a child. The passionate one wants to leave the world in order to escape sorrow, while the one whose passion is gone is already free of sorrow and is not pained even while living in the world. And the one who carries pride even in liberation and, along with it, clinging to the body, is neither a knower nor a yogi, only a bearer of sorrow.

Now Ashtavakra turns to direct address. Whether it be Shiva, or Vishnu, or Brahma, not one of them, even as your teacher, can make you whole without a forgetting of everything. Passion and aversion are properties of the mind, and the mind has never once been yours; you are free of alternatives, the very form of awareness, and changeless, so move through the world in ease. Then he speaks a chain of wonders. It is a wonder that even in the sage who knows the atman in all beings and all beings in the atman, some clinging should still be left. And a greater wonder still, that a person settled in the supreme non-duality, set on liberation, should fall under the sway of desire and be unstrung by the habit of play.

Even after knowing desire to be the enemy of wisdom, grown utterly frail and drawn near to the final hour, that someone should still long for that same desire is also a wonder. That a person detached from both this world and the next, discerning between the eternal and the fleeting, and yearning for liberation, should be frightened by liberation itself is a wonder greater still. The steady one, whether he is feasted upon or tormented, keeps looking always at the atman alone, so he is neither pleased nor angered. He watches his own moving, walking body as though it were someone else’s body, so whether praise comes or blame, why would that noble one be shaken.

Seeing this universe as maya and nothing more, his curiosity about it spent, why would that steady-minded one tremble even as death draws near. That great soul whose mind is free of longing does not waver even in despair, and with what could a person so filled by knowledge of the self even be compared. The one who has known by his very nature that this visible world is nothing at all, how would that steady-minded one see “this is worth taking, this is worth leaving.” For the person who has shed the inner stains of passion, who is free of every pair and free of hope, the enjoyments that fall to him of their own accord bring him neither sorrow nor satisfaction.

The done and the undone, when and for whom have these pairs ever grown quiet; knowing just this, out of a settled dispassion, come to rest in renunciation, without taking any vow at all. Then Ashtavakra calls out directly: O you of pure consciousness, do not stir your mind with resolve and doubt; grow utterly peaceful and rest in ease in that same atman of yours, whose very form is bliss. Let go even of meditation, hold nothing at all in your heart; you are the atman and are already free, so what will you accomplish by turning it over in thought. Here Ashtavakra repeats the same auspicious shloka: all of it is only imagination, the atman is free and eternal, and knowing this, what practice would the steady one repeat, like a child.

Having settled “the atman is Brahman” as certain, taking being and non-being to be imagined, what would the desireless person then know, what would he speak, what would he do. The yogi who has fallen silent, settled in “all is the atman,” finds his alternative of “this I am, this I am not” wearing thin. In the state of the yogi at deep peace there is no distraction and no concentration, no excess of knowing and no dullness, no pleasure and no pain. And for the yogi whose nature is free of alternatives, whether it be a kingdom or a beggar’s alms, gain or loss, a crowd or the forest, no difference remains anywhere.

And at the end, those same four lines return once more, as though the chapter were finding rest in its own beginning. For the yogi freed of the pairs “this was done, this was not done,” where is dharma, where is desire, where is wealth, and where even is discernment. For that jivanmukta yogi no duty remains, and no attachment in the heart; the life that is simply running along is his natural way. For that great soul, at rest upon the boundary of all his resolves, where is delusion, where is the world, where is meditation, where is liberation. Only one who has seen this world can renounce it by saying “it does not exist at all,” while the craving-free one does not see even while seeing, and right here this longest chapter comes to its rest.