Astavakra Gita Quotes

1. You are not bound by anything.
   What does a pure person like you need to renounce?
   Putting the complex organism to rest,
   you can go to your rest.
    
2. Realising that suffering arises from nothing
   other than thinking, dropping all desires
   one rids oneself of it -
   and is happy and at peace everywhere.
    
3. 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.
    
4. Enough of wealth, sensuality and good deeds.
   In the forest of samsara the mind
   has never found satisfaction in these.
    
5. A fool does not get rid of his stupidity even on hearing the truth.
   He may appear outwardly free from imaginations,
   but inside he is hankering after the senses still.
    
6. At peace, having shed all desires within,
   and realising that nothing exists here but the Lord,
   the Creator of all things -
   one is no longer attached to anything.
    
7. 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.
    
8. Rare indeed is the man whose observation of the world's behaviour has led to the extinction of his thirst for living,
   thirst for pleasure and thirst for knowledge.
    
9. The wise man excels in being without the sense of "me".
   Earth, a stone or gold are the same to him.
   The knots of his heart have been rent asunder,
   and he is freed from greed and blindness.
    
10. I am infinite like space,
    and the natural world is like a jar.
    To know this is knowledge -
    and then there is neither renunciation -
    acceptance or cessation of it.
     
11. My son, you consist of pure consciousness,
    and the world is not separate from you.
    So who is to accept or reject it, and how, and why?
     
12. In brief, the great-souled man who has come to know the Truth
    is without desire for either pleasure or liberation,
    and is always and everywhere free from attachment.
     
13. Being pure consciousness -
    do not disturb your mind with thoughts of for and against.
    Be at peace and remain happily in yourself, the essence of joy.
     
14. Seeing this world as pure illusion,
    and devoid of any interest in it -
    how should the strong-minded person, feel fear,
    even at the approach of death?
     
15. Realising, "It is just me" -
    from Brahma down to the last clump of grass
    one becomes free from uncertainty -
    pure, at peace and unconcerned -
    about what has been attained or not.