‘Peace’ is the seventh chapter. Peace looks like a state, yet Ashtavakra places it deeper, in your own essential nature. This distinction carries real weight, because a state comes and goes while your nature does not. This philosophical judgment later became the ground for Ramana Maharshi’s idea of ‘sahaja samadhi’, a natural and effortless absorption. In the modern era, J. Krishnamurti (1895-1986) returned again and again to the Ashtavakra manner in his ‘The First and Last Freedom’ (1954). His ‘choiceless awareness’ and Ashtavakra’s ‘peace of the witness’ stand, at the philosophical level, almost as one.Textual context
शान्ति
Peace · 5 shlokas
Janak speaks now, and in five shlokas he throws his whole state wide open. The first three rise from a single cry, “मय्य् अनन्त-महा-अम्भोधौ”, “I am the infinite, boundless ocean”. Deep peace speaks here, the kind that rises from simply being, with no scholar’s knowledge behind it.
The seventh chapter describes that same peaceful state of Janak. Here peace is the natural quality of your own essential nature, never an achievement won through practice. This is what sets it apart from the modern current of mind-training, where peace is treated as something to be gained. Ashtavakra says you already are peace. There is nothing to reach for.
So far
After the recognition of chit, of pure awareness, peace. And this peace rises from the very nature of chit, never from anything outside.
Janak opens with a vast image. He says, I am the infinite, boundless ocean, vast beyond any small drop, and this whole universe floats on me like a single boat. The boat drifts one way and then another, pushed by the gusts of its own mind. The ocean feels no anxiety at this, no impatience. Wherever the boat goes, the ocean holds its place, still. This is Janak’s point: let the world do what it will, I stay at peace, because I am the very ground on which all of it rocks.
Shloka 1
मय्यनन्तमहाम्भोधौ विश्वपोत इतस्ततः।
भ्रमति स्वान्तवातेन न ममास्त्यसहिष्णुता॥
In that same ocean, Janak says, this world is like a wave. By its own nature a wave rises at one moment and subsides at the next. From this the ocean gains nothing and loses nothing. Here lies the deepest restlessness in every person: when something grows, joy; when something shrinks, sorrow. The balance in the bank account rises and falls, the body’s weight rises and falls, one’s standing in the world rises and falls. The one who watches all of this, that “you”, neither grows nor shrinks. Janak’s gaze rests on that unmoving “you”, within which the waves keep coming and going while it stays exactly as it was.
Shloka 2
मय्यनन्तमहाम्भोधौ जगद्वीचिः स्वभावतः।
उदेतु वास्तमायातु न मे वृद्धिर्न च क्षतिः॥
Now Janak says something deeper still. In that infinite ocean this universe does not even “exist”. It is only a “name”, a notion, a fabric the mind has woven. And the one who watches this notion is utterly at peace, formless, settled in that nature of his own. Janak has lived this himself as direct realization, not something gathered secondhand from books or hearsay. He watches the universe the way a person watches a scene in a play, moving, unfolding, and separate from himself.
Shloka 3
मय्यनन्तमहाम्भोधौ विश्वं नाम विकल्पना।
अतिशान्तो निराकार एतदेवाहमास्थितः॥
Then Janak opens the relationship between feeling and the atman, the self. The atman does not dwell inside the feelings, and the feelings find no room inside that infinite, untainted reality. The two seem to lie on separate planes, one the still ground below, the other the fleeting ripples above. Resting in this understanding, Janak is unattached, free of craving, at peace, and settled right here. We go on saying, “I am happy”, “I am sad”, and Janak sees it another way. Joy comes, lingers, leaves; sorrow comes, lingers, leaves. Something that keeps coming and going like this, how could it ever be “me”?
Shloka 4
नात्मा भावेषु नो भावस्तत्रानन्ते निरञ्जने।
इत्यसक्तोऽस्पृहः शान्त एतदेवाहमास्थितः॥
And at the last a cry full of wonder rises from within Janak. Oh! I am nothing but chit, pure consciousness, and this whole world is like a web of magic, like a conjuror’s show. The magician performs his feats, the audience gasps, and even so they know none of it is real. For Janak the world is exactly this, appearing, moving, and untrue. So where in it could the idea of something worth keeping and something worth discarding find a foothold, on what ground could it stand? Our whole life is spent on this single choice, to hold on or to let go. To Janak’s eye it is like arguing over which trick in the magic show was “the better one”. On this note of wonder, chapter seven comes to a close.
Shloka 5
अहो चिन्मात्रमेवाहमिन्द्रजालोपमं जगत्।
इति मम कथं कुत्र हेयोपादेयकल्पना॥