Ashtavakra Gita 17.3
Ashtavakra Gita 17.3 is a verse from chapter 17 (The one who knows). The sage Ashtavakra speaks it to King Janaka. In plain English it says: "No objects ever please one who delights in the Self, as neem leaves do not please an elephant who loves sallaki leaves."
Ashtavakra, to King Janaka
न जातु विषयाः केऽपि स्वारामं हर्षयन्त्यमी ।सल्लकीपल्लवप्रीतमिवेभं निम्बपल्लवाः ॥
na jātu viṣayāḥ ke'pi svārāmaṃ harṣayantyamī |sallakīpallavaprītamivebhaṃ nimbapallavāḥ ||
No objects ever please one who delights in the Self, as neem leaves do not please an elephant who loves sallaki leaves.
What to notice
An elephant that loves sallaki leaves will not touch bitter neem.
Word by word
- na jātu
- never
- viṣayāḥ
- objects of the senses
- ke api
- any
- svārāmam
- one who delights in the Self
- harṣayanti
- please
- amī
- these
- sallakī-pallava
- sallaki leaves, a tree elephants love
- prītam
- delighted by
- iva
- like
- ibham
- an elephant
- nimba-pallavāḥ
- neem leaves
Reading the verse
Sallaki is the Indian frankincense tree, Boswellia, whose leaves elephants love. Neem leaves are bitter. An elephant that has its fill of sallaki will not bother with neem. Ashtavakra says sense objects are like neem to one who delights in the Self, svārāma. They are simply not interesting. The image avoids two common mistakes. It does not say the knower fights his desires, and it does not say objects are evil. Neem is a useful tree. It just has nothing to offer an elephant that has better food. The Advaita teachers read this as the natural end of desire, which comes from tasting something more satisfying. The Bhagavad Gita says the same thing in its second chapter: objects fall away from one who fasts, but the taste for them remains until the highest is seen. People searching for 'Ashtavakra Gita 17.3' often land on Bhagavad Gita 17.3, which is about faith shaping a person. This is the verse they were looking for.
Same thread in the Bhagavad Gita
Bhagavad Gita 2.59Krishna says even the taste for objects falls away once the highest has been seen.Chapter 17, The one who knows: A portrait of the free person, who wants neither pleasure nor freedom and lives at ease seeing, hearing and eating.
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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.