Ashtavakra Gita 15.8
Ashtavakra Gita 15.8 is a verse from chapter 15 (What you are). The sage Ashtavakra speaks it to King Janaka. In plain English it says: "Trust, my child, trust. Do not be confused about this. You are the Self, made of knowledge, the Lord, beyond nature."
Ashtavakra, to King Janaka
श्रद्धस्व तात श्रद्धस्व नात्र मोऽहं कुरुष्व भोः ।ज्ञानस्वरूपो भगवानात्मा त्वं प्रकृतेः परः ॥
śraddhasva tāta śraddhasva nātra mo'haṃ kuruṣva bhoḥ |jñānasvarūpo bhagavānātmā tvaṃ prakṛteḥ paraḥ ||
Trust, my child, trust. Do not be confused about this. You are the Self, made of knowledge, the Lord, beyond nature.
What to notice
Ashtavakra repeats one word, śraddhasva, trust, as a father would.
Word by word
- śraddhasva
- trust, have faith
- tāta
- my child
- na atra
- not here
- moham
- confusion
- kuruṣva
- make, fall into
- bhoḥ
- dear one
- jñāna-svarūpaḥ
- whose nature is knowledge
- bhagavān
- the Lord
- ātmā
- the Self
- tvam
- you
- prakṛteḥ paraḥ
- beyond nature
Reading the verse
This verse has a tenderness rare in the text. Ashtavakra says śraddhasva twice, trust, trust, and calls Janaka tāta, child, and bhoḥ, an affectionate address. Śraddhā in the Vedanta tradition is not blind belief. The Vivekachudamani, traditionally attributed to Shankara, defines it as holding the words of the teacher and the scripture to be true, a working confidence that lets you test what you hear. Without it nothing can be learned, since you will not stay with a teaching long enough to see whether it is true. The content of what is to be trusted is large. You are the Self, whose nature is knowledge, the Lord, beyond nature. Bhagavān is a word usually reserved for God. Ashtavakra uses it for Janaka's own Self without hesitation. The Advaita teachers say this is where knowledge and devotion meet: the Lord you worship and the Self you are turn out to be one. The verse asks the reader for something modest, which is to stop arguing with the teaching long enough to look.
Same thread in the Bhagavad Gita
Bhagavad Gita 4.39Krishna says the one with trust, devoted and self-controlled, gains knowledge and soon reaches peace.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.