✶Gnosis
← Contents
Theme
01 / 20

Listen

Dhammapada · narration sample

A one-minute narration sample. Every book in the library is narrated end to end — hear the rest in the app.

Ashtavakra Gita · 1 of 20

Chapter 1: Instruction on Self-Knowledge

Janaka said:

1.1. How is one to acquire knowledge? How is one to attain liberation? And how is one to reach dispassion? Tell me this, sir.

Ashtavakra said:

1.2. If you are seeking liberation, my son, avoid the objects of the senses like poison and cultivate tolerance, sincerity, compassion, contentment, and truthfulness as the antidote.

1.3. You do not consist of any of the elements — earth, water, fire, air, or even ether. To be liberated, know yourself as consisting of consciousness, the witness of these.

1.4. If only you will remain resting in consciousness, seeing yourself as distinct from the body, then even now you will become happy, peaceful and free from bonds.

1.5. You do not belong to the brahmin or any other caste, you are not at any stage, nor are you anything that the eye can see. You are unattached and formless, the witness of everything — so be happy.

1.6. Righteousness and unrighteousness, pleasure and pain are purely of the mind and are no concern of yours. You are neither the doer nor the reaper of the consequences, so you are always free.

1.7. You are the one witness of everything and are always completely free. The cause of your bondage is that you see the witness as something other than this.

1.8. Since you have been bitten by the black snake, the opinion about yourself that “I am the doer,” drink the antidote of faith in the fact that “I am not the doer,” and be happy.

1.9. Burn down the forest of ignorance with the fire of the understanding that “I am the one pure awareness,” and be happy and free from distress.

1.10. That in which all this — imagined like the snake in a rope — appears: that joy, supreme joy, and awareness is what you are, so be happy.

1.11. If one thinks of oneself as free, one is free, and if one thinks of oneself as bound, one is bound. Here this saying is true, “Thinking makes it so.”

1.12. Your real nature is as the one perfect, free, and actionless consciousness, the all-pervading witness — unattached to anything, desireless and at peace. It is from illusion that you seem to be involved in samsara.

1.13. Meditate on yourself as motionless awareness, free from any dualism, giving up the mistaken idea that you are just a derivative consciousness or anything external or internal.

1.14. You have long been trapped in the snare of identification with the body. Sever it with the knife of knowledge that “I am awareness,” and be happy, my son.

1.15. You are really unbound and actionless, self-illuminating and spotless already. The cause of your bondage is that you are still resorting to stilling the mind.

1.16. All of this is really filled by you and strung out in you, for what you consist of is pure awareness — so don’t be small-minded.

1.17. You are unconditioned and changeless, formless and immovable, unfathomable awareness, unperturbable: so hold to nothing but consciousness.

1.18. Recognise that the apparent is unreal, while the unmanifest is abiding. Through this initiation into truth you will escape falling into unreality again.

1.19. Just as a mirror exists everywhere both within and apart from its reflected images, so the Supreme Lord exists everywhere within and apart from this body.

1.20. Just as one and the same all-pervading space exists within and without a jar, so the eternal, everlasting God exists in the totality of things.

Asked of Guide

If I simply rest as awareness, will I really become free now?

Ashtavakra says that resting as consciousness—“the one perfect, free, and actionless consciousness” (1.12)—is the direct means to freedom: see yourself as the witness distinct from body and mind and “even now you will become happy, peaceful and free from bonds” (1.4). The book treats bondage as a misidentification; knowing “I am awareness” severs the attachment that keeps you bound (1.14).

The text recommends inner practices of understanding and faith rather than outer rites: cultivate tolerance, sincerity, compassion, contentment, and truthfulness as antidotes (1.2), and use the conviction “I am not the doer” to counter the sense of agency (1.8). This chapter connects with the Crest-Jewel of Wisdom, which likewise affirms the self as the unmoved, everlasting awareness and urges identification with that alone.

Guide is the guide inside the Gnosis app, where every book on these shelves is free to read. Guide is the part you pay for — your guide has read all of them, and answers about the passage you’re actually on. Ask your guide your own question.

Echoes elsewhere

Crest-Jewel of Wisdom · Hinduismall; everlasting, pure, unmoved, unchanging, is the secondless Eternal; and what that is, I am. Where the differences made by glamor have sunk to final setting, of hidden nature, pThunder, Perfect Mind · Gnosticism1. I, however, am the [perfect] mind and the repose of [thunder]. 2. I am the knowledge of my seeking, and the finding of those who seek for me, and the command of those who ask ofThe Yoga-Vasishtha-Maharamayana of Valmiki · Hinduismentire, is no body at all. (The personality of man, belongs to his mind and not to his person). 72. Therefore I am something beside this body of mine, and that is everlasting and nThe Yoga-Vasishtha-Maharamayana of Valmiki · Hinduismno bounds; I have overcome all beings; but what is the good (that I have derived from all this)? 9. There is only a reiteration of the very same things, that I had there, here and