Ashtavakra Gita 18.1
Ashtavakra Gita 18.1 is a verse from chapter 18 (Peace in a hundred verses). The sage Ashtavakra speaks it to King Janaka. In plain English it says: "I bow to that peace, that light, whose nature is joy alone, at whose dawning the error of the world becomes like a dream."
Ashtavakra, to King Janaka
यस्य बोधोदये तावत्स्वप्नवद् भवति भ्रमः ।तस्मै सुखैकरूपाय नमः शान्ताय तेजसे ॥
yasya bodhodaye tāvatsvapnavad bhavati bhramaḥ |tasmai sukhaikarūpāya namaḥ śāntāya tejase ||
I bow to that peace, that light, whose nature is joy alone, at whose dawning the error of the world becomes like a dream.
What to notice
The hundred-verse chapter opens with a bow, before any argument.
Word by word
- yasya
- whose
- bodha-udaye
- at the dawning of awareness
- tāvat
- then
- svapnavat
- like a dream
- bhavati
- becomes
- bhramaḥ
- error, the mistaken world
- tasmai
- to that
- sukha-eka-rūpāya
- whose one form is joy
- namaḥ
- I bow
- śāntāya
- to the peaceful
- tejase
- to the light
Reading the verse
Chapter 18 is a hundred verses long, a third of the whole text, and it is often titled the chapter of peace. It opens with a salutation, namaḥ. What is saluted has no name: it is that light, tejas, that peace, śānta, whose one form is joy, at whose dawning the error of the world becomes like a dream. Dreams are the tradition's favourite evidence. While dreaming, the dream world is fully real, with its fears and pleasures. On waking, nothing of it needs to be destroyed. It simply stops being taken as real. The verse says the same happens to the world when awareness dawns. The Advaita commentators note that the bow is directed at what Ashtavakra has been teaching all along, the Self, so the teacher bows to the student's own nature before speaking. A reader can use the verse the same way, as a short act of respect at the start of a day, directed at the awareness that is about to see it.
Same thread in the Bhagavad Gita
Bhagavad Gita 2.69Krishna says what is night for all beings is where the self-controlled one is awake.Chapter 18, Peace in a hundred verses: The longest chapter, a third of the text, contrasting the confused who strive with the steady who are already at rest.
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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.