Ashtavakra Gita 18.100
Ashtavakra Gita 18.100 is a verse from chapter 18 (Peace in a hundred verses). The sage Ashtavakra speaks it to King Janaka. In plain English it says: "A mind at peace does not run to the crowd or to the forest. As it is, wherever it is, it stays the same."
Ashtavakra, to King Janaka
न धावति जनाकीर्णं नारण्यमुपशान्तधीः ।यथातथा यत्रतत्र सम एवावतिष्ठते ॥
na dhāvati janākīrṇaṃ nāraṇyamupaśāntadhīḥ |yathātathā yatratatra sama evāvatiṣṭhate ||
A mind at peace does not run to the crowd or to the forest. As it is, wherever it is, it stays the same.
What to notice
The last verse of Ashtavakra's teaching refuses both the crowd and the forest.
Word by word
- na dhāvati
- does not run
- jana-ākīrṇam
- to the crowd, the busy town
- na araṇyam
- nor to the forest
- upaśānta-dhīḥ
- one whose mind is at peace
- yathā tathā
- however it is
- yatra tatra
- wherever it is
- samaḥ eva
- the same
- avatiṣṭhate
- remains
Reading the verse
This is Ashtavakra's last word in the text. Chapters 19 and 20 belong to Janaka. Ashtavakra ends with a picture of where the peaceful mind lives, and the answer is nowhere in particular. It does not run to the crowded town and it does not run to the forest. Both directions were respected paths in old India. Some people sought engagement, others withdrew to hermitages. Ashtavakra declines both as escapes. Yathā tathā, however things are. Yatra tatra, wherever one is. The mind stays the same. The Advaita commentators read this as the fruit of the whole teaching. A person who knows the Self has no need to arrange circumstances, since peace does not come from them. For a reader, the verse removes a common excuse. Many of us think we would be calm somewhere else, after the move, after the project, away from the noise. Ashtavakra says the peaceful mind runs to neither. It stays where it is and is at peace there.
Same thread in the Bhagavad Gita
Bhagavad Gita 12.18Krishna describes the one who is the same to friend and foe, in honour and dishonour, in heat and cold.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.