Ashtavakra Gita 2.1
Ashtavakra Gita 2.1 is a verse from chapter 2 (Janaka's wonder). King Janaka speaks it to his teacher, the sage Ashtavakra. In plain English it says: "How strange. I am spotless, at peace, awareness itself, beyond nature. All this time I have been fooled by delusion."
King Janaka, to Ashtavakra
अहो निरञ्जनः शान्तो बोधोऽहं प्रकृतेः परः ।एतावन्तमहं कालं मोहेनैव विडम्बितः ॥
aho nirañjanaḥ śānto bodho'haṃ prakṛteḥ paraḥ |etāvantamahaṃ kālaṃ mohenaiva viḍambitaḥ ||
How strange. I am spotless, at peace, awareness itself, beyond nature. All this time I have been fooled by delusion.
What to notice
The student's first words after the teaching are a laugh at himself: all this time.
Word by word
- aho
- how strange, ah
- nirañjanaḥ
- spotless
- śāntaḥ
- at peace
- bodhaḥ
- awareness
- aham
- I am
- prakṛteḥ paraḥ
- beyond nature
- etāvantam kālam
- all this time
- mohena
- by delusion
- eva
- only
- viḍambitaḥ
- fooled, made a mockery of
Reading the verse
Chapter 2 belongs to Janaka. He has heard nineteen verses from his teacher and something has turned over. He begins with aho, an exclamation of wonder that runs through the whole chapter. Then he says what he is: spotless, at peace, awareness, beyond nature. Prakṛti, nature, includes body and mind, so he is placing himself beyond both. The second line has a wry tone. Viḍambita means mocked or made a fool of. For all these years, he says, I have been fooled by delusion. The Advaita tradition values this verse as a picture of what recognition feels like from inside. There is no pride in it and no drama, only surprise that something so plain was missed for so long. Many people know a small version of this, the moment when a family quarrel that felt enormous suddenly looks like a misunderstanding. The rest of chapter 2 is Janaka testing the new view against everything he knows, and finding that it holds.
Same thread in the Bhagavad Gita
Bhagavad Gita 18.73Arjuna, at the end of the Gita, says his delusion is gone and his memory of who he is has returned.Chapter 2, Janaka's wonder: Janaka finds himself as awareness and bows to it in astonishment, testing the new view against the world, the body and the crowd.
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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.