Ashtavakra Gita 1.15
Ashtavakra Gita 1.15 is a verse from chapter 1 (The witness). The sage Ashtavakra speaks it to King Janaka. In plain English it says: "You are unattached and without action, shining by your own light, without stain. This is your bondage: you keep practising samadhi."
Ashtavakra, to King Janaka
निःसङ्गो निष्क्रियोऽसि त्वं स्वप्रकाशो निरञ्जनः ।अयमेव हि ते बन्धः समाधिमनुतिष्ठति ॥
niḥsaṅgo niṣkriyo'si tvaṃ svaprakāśo nirañjanaḥ |ayameva hi te bandhaḥ samādhimanutiṣṭhati ||
You are unattached and without action, shining by your own light, without stain. This is your bondage: you keep practising samadhi.
What to notice
Practising samadhi is named as the bondage itself.
Word by word
- niḥsaṅgaḥ
- unattached
- niṣkriyaḥ
- without action
- asi
- you are
- sva-prakāśaḥ
- shining by your own light
- nirañjanaḥ
- without stain
- ayam eva
- this alone
- te bandhaḥ
- your bondage
- samādhim
- samadhi, meditative absorption
- anutiṣṭhati
- you keep practising
- hi
- indeed
Reading the verse
This is one of the verses that makes the Ashtavakra Gita different from most yoga texts. Samadhi, deep meditative absorption, is usually the goal of practice. Here Ashtavakra says your bondage is that you practise it. The reason is in the first line. You are unattached, actionless, self-luminous and stainless already. If you practise samadhi in order to become free, you have assumed you are not free, and the practice confirms the assumption every day. The commentators read this as a teaching for a particular kind of student, with no contempt for meditation, one like Janaka who is ready to hear the conclusion. For many people, practice is how the mind becomes calm enough to hear this at all, and the Bhagavad Gita says the mind is steadied by practice and dispassion. Ashtavakra is speaking about the last step, where the practitioner sees that the meditator, too, was an idea. The verse is a warning against turning freedom into a project with a finish line.
Where the Bhagavad Gita differs
Bhagavad Gita 6.35Krishna tells Arjuna the restless mind is steadied by practice and dispassion, the step this verse assumes is behind you.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.