Ashtavakra Gita
Song of Ashtavakra
by Ashtavakra | 1994 | 8,560 words
The Ashtavakra Gita (अष्टावक्रगीता; aṣṭāvakragītā) or the 'Song of Ashtavakra' is a classical Advaita Vedanta scripture. Ashtavakra Gita (or 'Ashtavakra Samhita') is a dialogue between Ashtavakra and Janaka (king of Mithila) on the nature of soul, reality and bondage. It offers an extremely radical version of non-dualistic philosophy. The Gita ins...
Chapter X
Ashtavakra:
1 Abandoning desire, the enemy, along with gain, itself so full of loss, and the good deeds which are the cause of the other two - practice indifference to everything.
2 Look on such things as friends, land, money, property, wife, and bequests as nothing but a dream or a three or five-day conjuror's show.
3 Wherever a desire occurs, see samsara in it. Establishing yourself in firm dispassion, be free of passion and happy.
4 The essential nature of bondage is nothing other than desire, and its elimination is known as liberation. It is simply by not being attached to changing things that the everlasting joy of attainment is reached.
5 You are one, conscious and pure, while all this is just inert non-being. Ignorance itself is nothing, so what need have you of desire to understand?
6 Kingdoms, children, wives, bodies, pleasures - these have all been lost to you life after life, attached to them though you were.
7 Enough of wealth, sensuality and good deeds. In the forest of samsara the mind has never found satisfaction in these.
8 How many births have you not done hard and painful labour with body, mind and speech. Now at last stop!