Astavakra Gita Quotes

1. You are unconditioned
   and changeless, formless and immovable,
   unfathomable awareness and unperturbable,
   so hold to nothing but consciousness.
    
2. Kingdoms, children, wives, bodies, pleasures -
   these have all been lost to you life after life,
   attached to them though you were.
    
3. The mind of the fool is always caught
   in an opinion about becoming or avoiding something,
   but the wise man's nature is to have no opinions
   about becoming and avoiding.
    
4. The great souled person sees even his own body in action
   as if it were some-one else's,
   so how should he be disturbed by praise or blame?
    
5. Whatever you see, it is you alone manifest in it.
   How could bracelets, armlets and anklets
   be different from the gold?
    
6. 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.
    
7. Peace is everywhere for the wise man
   who lives on whatever happens to come to him,
   going to wherever he feels like,
   and sleeping wherever the sun happens to set.
    
8. For someone who has eliminated attachment,
   and who is free from dualism and from desire,
   an object of enjoyment that comes of itself -
   is neither painful nor pleasurable.
    
9. Let the world wave rise or subside
   according to its own nature in you, the great ocean.
   It is no gain or loss to you.
    
10. 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.
     
11. I am like the ocean -
    and the multiplicity of objects is comparable to a wave.
    To know this is knowledge,
    and then there is neither renunciation -
    acceptance or cessation of it.
     
12. Recognising oneself in all beings, and all beings in oneself,
    be happy, free from the sense of responsibility
    and free from preoccupation with "Me".
     
13. 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.
     
14. Sometimes one experiences distress because of one's body,
    sometimes because of one's tongue
    and sometimes because of one's mind.
    Abandoning all of these, I live as I please.
     
15. Equal in pain and in pleasure,
    equal in hope and in disappointment,
    equal in life and in death,
    and complete as you are,
    you can go to your rest.