Ashtavakra Gita 1.13
Ashtavakra Gita 1.13 is a verse from chapter 1 (The witness). The sage Ashtavakra speaks it to King Janaka. In plain English it says: "Meditate on the Self as unchanging awareness, one without a second. Let go of the mistaken idea that you are a reflection, and of every sense of outside and inside."
Ashtavakra, to King Janaka
कूटस्थं बोधमद्वैतमात्मानं परिभावय ।आभासोऽहं भ्रमं मुक्त्वा भावं बाह्यमथान्तरम् ॥
kūṭasthaṃ bodhamadvaitamātmānaṃ paribhāvaya |ābhāso'haṃ bhramaṃ muktvā bhāvaṃ bāhyamathāntaram ||
Meditate on the Self as unchanging awareness, one without a second. Let go of the mistaken idea that you are a reflection, and of every sense of outside and inside.
What to notice
The verse asks you to drop the idea that you are a reflection of awareness.
Word by word
- kūṭastham
- unchanging, like an anvil
- bodham
- awareness
- advaitam
- one without a second
- ātmānam
- the Self
- paribhāvaya
- meditate on, dwell on
- ābhāsaḥ aham
- I am a reflection
- bhramam
- error
- muktvā
- letting go
- bhāvam
- notion, feeling
- bāhyam
- outer
- atha
- and
- āntaram
- inner
Reading the verse
Kūṭastha is the anvil in a blacksmith's shop. Everything is hammered on it, and it does not change shape. Ashtavakra uses it for the Self: unchanging awareness, one without a second. The instruction is paribhāvaya, dwell on this repeatedly. Then he names the error to drop: ābhāso 'ham, I am a reflection. Some Advaita schools explain the individual self as awareness reflected in the mind, like the sun reflected in a pot of water. The reflection moves when the water moves, and seems small and shaky. Ashtavakra tells Janaka not to identify with the reflection. Take your stand as the sun instead of its image in the pot. He adds a second thing to drop: the sense of outer and inner. We usually feel that we live inside and the world is outside. If awareness is one without a second, that border is also a construction. This verse is unusual in chapter 1 because it gives a practice, paribhāvaya. Even the Ashtavakra Gita, which later dismisses practice, allows this much: keep returning to what you are.
Same thread in the Bhagavad Gita
Bhagavad Gita 12.3Krishna describes the imperishable as all-pervading, unthinkable, unchanging, kūṭastha, steady and fixed.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.