Ashtavakra Gita 1.2
Ashtavakra Gita 1.2 is a verse from chapter 1 (The witness). The sage Ashtavakra speaks it to King Janaka. In plain English it says: "If you want freedom, my child, leave the objects of the senses as you would leave poison. Take forgiveness, honesty, kindness, contentment and truth as you would take nectar."
Ashtavakra, to King Janaka
मुक्तिमिच्छसि चेत्तात विषयान् विषवत्त्यज ।क्षमार्जवदयातोषसत्यं पीयूषवद् भज ॥
muktimicchasi cettāta viṣayān viṣavattyaja |kṣamārjavadayātoṣasatyaṃ pīyūṣavad bhaja ||
If you want freedom, my child, leave the objects of the senses as you would leave poison. Take forgiveness, honesty, kindness, contentment and truth as you would take nectar.
What to notice
The teacher's first answer is about conduct, before any talk of awareness.
Word by word
- muktim
- freedom
- icchasi
- you want
- cet
- if
- tāta
- my child, dear one
- viṣayān
- objects of the senses
- viṣavat
- like poison
- tyaja
- leave, give up
- kṣamā
- forgiveness, patience
- ārjava
- straightforwardness, honesty
- dayā
- kindness
- toṣa
- contentment
- satyam
- truth
- pīyūṣavat
- like nectar
- bhaja
- take in, keep to
Reading the verse
Ashtavakra calls the king tāta, the word a father uses for a child. Before he says anything about the Self, he gives an ethical instruction. Sense objects are to be left like poison, and five qualities are to be taken like nectar: forgiveness, honesty, kindness, contentment and truth. The image is precise. You do not argue with poison. You leave it in the cup. Nectar you drink. Traditional commentators note that the verse sets the ground for everything that follows. The later chapters say there is nothing to practise and nothing to give up, and readers who skip this verse sometimes take that as permission to drop ordinary decency. The Advaita tradition reads it the other way: a mind that keeps these five qualities becomes quiet enough to hear the teaching in 1.3 onward. Notice how ordinary the list is. Nothing exotic, nothing secret. Forgiveness and contentment are things you can practise at a family dinner or a difficult meeting today, and they are named here as the first step toward freedom.
Same thread in the Bhagavad Gita
Bhagavad Gita 16.2Krishna's list of the qualities of a gentle nature includes truth, kindness and freedom from greed.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.