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Ashtavakra Gita · 16 of 20
Chapter 16: Special Instruction
Ashtavakra said:
16.1. My son, you may recite or listen to countless scriptures, but you will not be established within until you can forget everything.
16.2. You may, as a learned man, indulge in wealth, activity, and meditation, but your mind will still long for that which is the cessation of desire, and beyond all goals.
16.3. Everyone is in pain because of their striving to achieve something, but no one realises it. By no more than this instruction, the fortunate one attains tranquillity.
16.4. Happiness belongs to no one but that supremely lazy man for whom even opening and closing his eyes is a bother.
16.5. When the mind is freed from such pairs of opposites as, “I have done this,” and “I have not done that,” it becomes indifferent to merit, wealth, sensuality and liberation.
16.6. One man is abstemious and averse to the senses, another is greedy and attached to them, but he who is free from both taking and rejecting is neither abstemious nor greedy.
16.7. So long as desire, the state of lack of discrimination, remains, the sense of revulsion and attraction will remain, which is the root and branch of samsara.
16.8. Desire springs from usage, and aversion from abstension, but the wise man is free from the pairs of opposites like a child, and becomes established.
16.9. The passionate man wants to eliminate samsara so as to avoid pain, but the dispassionate man is free from pain and feels no distress even in it.
16.10. He who is proud about even liberation or his own body, and feels them his own, is neither a seer nor a yogi. He is still just a sufferer.
16.11. If even Shiva, Vishnu, or the lotus-born Brahma were your instructor, until you have forgotten everything you cannot be established within.
Asked of Guide
Why does Ashtavakra insist that you must "forget everything" to be established within?
Ashtavakra says that all scripture, practice, and achievement leave the mind reaching for goals; only by forgetting everything does the mind stop its striving and attain tranquillity. He repeats this demand — even if Shiva, Vishnu, or Brahma teach you — because attachment to any identity, merit, or liberation keeps the pairs of opposites active and so sustains samsara.
Forgetting here means dropping the framework of doing and not-doing so the mind becomes indifferent to praise, blame, gain, and loss and rests like a child or one in deep sleep. This chapter echoes the Yoga-Vasishtha and the Upanishads, which also portray the liberated person as inwardly serene and free from desire.
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.