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Ashtavakra Gita · 8 of 20

Chapter 8: Bondage and Liberation

Ashtavakra said:

8.1. Bondage is when the mind longs for something, grieves about something, rejects something, holds on to something, is pleased about something or displeased about something.

8.2. Liberation is when the mind does not long for anything, grieve about anything, reject anything, or hold on to anything, and is not pleased about anything or displeased about anything.

8.3. Bondage is when the mind is tangled in one of the senses, and liberation is when the mind is not tangled in any of the senses.

8.4. When there is no “me,” that is liberation, and when there is “me” there is bondage. Consider this carefully, and neither hold on to anything nor reject anything.

Asked of Guide

Why does Ashtavakra say “when there is no ‘me,’ that is liberation”?

Ashtavakra identifies bondage with the mind grasping—longing, grieving, rejecting, holding on, taking pleasure or displeasure—so the sense of “me” is the knot that ties those reactions to experience. The statement “when there is no ‘me,’ that is liberation” names liberation as the absence of that self-referential knot, a mind that neither clings nor recoils and so is free from the strings of pleasure and pain.

This echoes the Yoga-Vasishtha’s warning against reliance on body and ego and the Sutta Nipata’s direction away from fixed views: freedom arrives when the ego-centered standpoint dissolves. Read together, the texts describe liberation as a practical unweaving of selfhood rather than a change in external circumstances.

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Echoes elsewhere

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