Chapter XVII

Ashtavakta said:

¹ He who is content, with purified senses, and always enjoys solitude, has gained the fruit of knowledge and the fruit of the practice of yoga too.

² The knower of truth is never distressed in this world, for the whole round world is full of himself alone.

³ None of these senses please a man who has found satisfaction within, just as Nimba leaves do not please the elephant that has a taste for Sallaki leaves.

⁴ Not attached to the things he has enjoyed, and not hankering after the things he has not enjoyed, such a man is hard to find.

⁵ Those who desire pleasure and those who desire liberation are both found in samsara, but the great souled man who desires neither pleasure nor liberation is rare indeed.

⁶ It is only the noble minded who is free from attraction or repulsion to religion, wealth, sensuality, and life and death too.

⁷ He feels no desire for the elimination of all this, nor anger at its continuing, so the lucky man lives happily with whatever means of sustenance presents itself.

⁸ Thus fulfilled through this knowledge, contented and with the thinking mind emptied, he lives happily just seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling and tasting.

⁹ In him for whom the ocean of samsara has dried up, there is neither attachment or aversion. His gaze is vacant, his behaviour purposeless, and his senses inactive.

¹⁰ Surely the supreme state is everywhere for the liberated mind. He is neither awake or asleep, and neither opens or closes his eyes.

¹¹ The liberated man is resplendent everywhere, free from all desires. Everywhere he appears self-possessed and pure of heart.

¹² Seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, tasting, speaking and walking about, the great souled man who is freed from trying to achieve or avoid anything is free indeed.

¹³ The liberated man is free from desires everywhere. He does not blame, does not praise, does not rejoice, is not disappointed, and neither gives nor takes.

¹⁴ When a great souled one is equally unperturbed in mind and self-possessed at the sight of a woman full of desire and at approaching death, he is truly liberated.

¹⁵ There is no distinction between pleasure and pain, man and woman, success and failure for the wise man who looks on everything as equal.

¹⁶ There is no aggression or compassion, no pride or humility, no wonder or confusion for the man whose days of running about are over.

¹⁷ The liberated man is not averse to the senses and nor is he attached to them. He enjoys himself continually with an unattached mind in both achievement and non-achievement.

¹⁸ One established in the Absolute state with an empty mind does not know the alternatives of inner stillness and lack of stillness, and of good and evil.

¹⁹ Free of 'me' and 'mine' and of a sense of responsibility, aware that 'Nothing exists', with all desires extinguished within, a man does not act even in acting.

²⁰ He whose thinking mind is dissolved achieves the indescribable state and is free from the mental display of delusion, dream and ignorance.