Ashtavakra Gita 1.10
Ashtavakra Gita 1.10 is a verse from chapter 1 (The witness). The sage Ashtavakra speaks it to King Janaka. In plain English it says: "That in which this world appears, imagined like a snake on a rope, that joy beyond joy, that awareness: you are that. Be happy."
Ashtavakra, to King Janaka
यत्र विश्वमिदं भाति कल्पितं रज्जुसर्पवत् ।आनन्दपरमानन्दः स बोधस्त्वं सुखं भव ॥
yatra viśvamidaṃ bhāti kalpitaṃ rajjusarpavat |ānandaparamānandaḥ sa bodhastvaṃ sukhaṃ bhava ||
That in which this world appears, imagined like a snake on a rope, that joy beyond joy, that awareness: you are that. Be happy.
What to notice
The world is compared to a snake seen on a rope, and the rope is you.
Word by word
- yatra
- in which
- viśvam idam
- this world
- bhāti
- appears, shines
- kalpitam
- imagined, projected
- rajju-sarpavat
- like a snake on a rope
- ānanda-paramānandaḥ
- joy, the highest joy
- saḥ
- that
- bodhaḥ
- awareness
- tvam
- you
- sukham
- happily
- bhava
- be
Reading the verse
The rope and the snake is the most famous example in Advaita. In dim light a coiled rope looks like a snake. The fear is real, the heartbeat is real, but nothing is there except rope. When a lamp is brought, the snake does not go anywhere. It was never there. Ashtavakra applies this to the world: it appears in awareness as the snake appears on the rope. The commentators are careful about what this claims. It allows the world its place in daily life and says that it has no being apart from the awareness in which it appears. The second half turns from the world to the reader. That awareness is ānanda, joy, and paramānanda, the highest joy, and you are it. So the instruction to be happy is less a command than a reminder. The verse pairs a large claim about the world with a personal one, and leaves the reader to notice that they are the same claim.
Chapter 1, The witness: Janaka asks how to know, how to be free and how to let go, and Ashtavakra answers that he is already the free witness of everything.
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Sources and method
Sanskrit from the common text of the Ashtavakra Gita, also called the Ashtavakra Samhita. Where our source had obvious typing errors we restored the standard reading and listed each change in our review notes. IAST is generated from the Devanagari. The English, the word meanings and the notes are Wisdom's own, written in the Advaita tradition of Shankara's school, the line followed by commentators such as Swami Nityaswarupananda and Swami Chinmayananda, with Lala Baij Nath's public-domain translation of 1907 as a reference.
Wisdom translation, edited by Ankur Shukla. Commentary AI-drafted, human review pending.