Ashtavakra Gita 15.4
Ashtavakra Gita 15.4 is a verse from chapter 15 (What you are). The sage Ashtavakra speaks it to King Janaka. In plain English it says: "You are not the body, and the body is not yours. You are not the doer or the enjoyer. You are awareness itself, always the witness, needing nothing. Move about at ease."
Ashtavakra, to King Janaka
न त्वं देहो न ते देहो भोक्ता कर्ता न वा भवान् ।चिद्रूपोऽसि सदा साक्षी निरपेक्षः सुखं चर ॥
na tvaṃ deho na te deho bhoktā kartā na vā bhavān |cidrūpo'si sadā sākṣī nirapekṣaḥ sukhaṃ cara ||
You are not the body, and the body is not yours. You are not the doer or the enjoyer. You are awareness itself, always the witness, needing nothing. Move about at ease.
What to notice
The verse begins with denials and ends with a walk: move about at ease.
Word by word
- na tvam dehaḥ
- you are not the body
- na te dehaḥ
- the body is not yours
- bhoktā
- enjoyer
- kartā
- doer
- bhavān
- you
- cidrūpaḥ
- awareness itself
- asi
- you are
- sadā
- always
- sākṣī
- witness
- nirapekṣaḥ
- needing nothing
- sukham
- at ease
- cara
- move about, live
Reading the verse
Chapter 15 returns to the themes of chapter 1, and this verse gathers the main points of chapter 1 into one line. You are not the body, and the body is not yours. You are neither doer nor enjoyer. You are awareness, always the witness, needing nothing. Then the instruction: sukhaṃ cara, move about at ease. Cara is a verb of walking, wandering, living one's life. It is a fitting end. The teaching sends Janaka back into his day with a lighter step, with no demand that he sit still forever. The phrase na te deha, the body is not yours, goes a step beyond na tvaṃ deha, you are not the body. Even ownership is denied. The Advaita reading is that the body belongs to nature and is used by awareness, the way a road is used by a traveller. The traveller does not own it and is not harmed when it ends. Readers who want one verse to memorise from the Ashtavakra Gita often choose this one.
Same thread in the Bhagavad Gita
Bhagavad Gita 2.20Krishna says the Self is never born and never dies, and is not slain when the body is slain.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.