Ashtavakra Gita 15.14
Ashtavakra Gita 15.14 is a verse from chapter 15 (What you are). The sage Ashtavakra speaks it to King Janaka. In plain English it says: "Whatever you see, you alone appear in it. Do bracelets, armlets and anklets appear as anything apart from the gold?"
Ashtavakra, to King Janaka
यत्त्वं पश्यसि तत्रैकस्त्वमेव प्रतिभाससे ।किं पृथक् भासते स्वर्णात् कटकाङ्गदनूपुरम् ॥
yattvaṃ paśyasi tatraikastvameva pratibhāsase |kiṃ pṛthak bhāsate svarṇāt kaṭakāṅgadanūpuram ||
Whatever you see, you alone appear in it. Do bracelets, armlets and anklets appear as anything apart from the gold?
What to notice
Bracelets, armlets and anklets are three shapes, and there is only one gold.
Word by word
- yat
- whatever
- tvam
- you
- paśyasi
- see
- tatra
- there
- ekaḥ
- alone
- tvam eva
- you yourself
- pratibhāsase
- appear
- kim
- does
- pṛthak
- apart
- bhāsate
- appear
- svarṇāt
- from gold
- kaṭaka
- bracelet
- aṅgada
- armlet
- nūpuram
- anklet
Reading the verse
Indian households have long kept wealth as jewellery, and every family knows that a bracelet can be melted into an anklet without losing a gram of gold. Ashtavakra uses this everyday knowledge. Whatever you see, you alone appear there. Do the bracelet, the armlet and the anklet appear as something apart from the gold? Of course not. You may admire the shape, wear it on a different part of the body, call it by a different name, and the jeweller still weighs it as gold. The Advaita reading applies this to all experience. Trees, cities and people are different shapes, and what appears as all of them is awareness. The world keeps its variety, and a good jeweller cares a great deal about the shape. Beneath every difference there is a unity that is never lost. The example appeared in 2.10 with a single bracelet. Here three ornaments make the point that variety itself is no obstacle to oneness.
Same thread in the Bhagavad Gita
Bhagavad Gita 7.19Krishna says the rare great soul is the one who sees that Vasudeva is all.Chapter 15, What you are: Ashtavakra's second long teaching: you are awareness, the world is waves on your ocean, so move about at ease.
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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.