The verse

Ashtavakra Gita 4.1Chapter 4, Verse 1

King Janaka

Ashtavakra Gita 4.1 is a verse from chapter 4 (The knower at play). King Janaka speaks it to his teacher, the sage Ashtavakra. In plain English it says: "The steady one who knows the Self plays the game of experience. He has nothing in common with the confused, who carry the world like beasts of burden."

The verse

हन्तात्मज्ञानस्य धीरस्य खेलतो भोगलीलया ।न हि संसारवाहीकैर्मूढैः सह समानता ॥

hantātmajñānasya dhīrasya khelato bhogalīlayā |na hi saṃsāravāhīkairmūḍhaiḥ saha samānatā ||

The steady one who knows the Self plays the game of experience. He has nothing in common with the confused, who carry the world like beasts of burden.

King Janaka, to Ashtavakra

Ashtavakra Gita · 4.1

Word meanings and a note for this verse are still being written. Read it in context on the chapter 4 page, or start with the verses in where to begin.

Chapter 4 of 20
The knower at play

Chapter 4, The knower at play: The one who knows the Self lives freely, untouched by merit and sin as space is untouched by smoke.

Read all 6 verses in this chapter →

Seven mornings of short readings from the Bhagavad Gita, chosen for what you're going through, by email.

Send my week

New to this text? Seven mornings with the Ashtavakra Gita gives you one verse a day for a week.

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.