Ashtavakra Gita 8.4
Ashtavakra Gita 8.4 is a verse from chapter 8 (Bondage and freedom). The sage Ashtavakra speaks it to King Janaka. In plain English it says: "When there is no 'I', there is freedom. When there is 'I', there is bondage. Knowing this, lightly, take nothing and drop nothing."
Ashtavakra, to King Janaka
यदा नाहं तदा मोक्षो यदाहं बन्धनं तदा ।मत्वेति हेलया किञ्चिन्मा गृहाण विमुञ्च मा ॥
yadā nāhaṃ tadā mokṣo yadāhaṃ bandhanaṃ tadā |matveti helayā kiñcinmā gṛhāṇa vimuñca mā ||
When there is no 'I', there is freedom. When there is 'I', there is bondage. Knowing this, lightly, take nothing and drop nothing.
What to notice
The word helayā, lightly or playfully, sets the tone for the whole instruction.
Word by word
- yadā
- when
- na aham
- there is no 'I'
- tadā
- then
- mokṣaḥ
- freedom
- aham
- 'I'
- bandhanam
- bondage
- matvā
- having understood
- iti
- this
- helayā
- lightly, playfully
- kiñcit
- anything
- mā gṛhāṇa
- do not grab
- vimuñca mā
- do not drop
Reading the verse
The first line is as short as Sanskrit allows. When there is no I, there is freedom. When there is I, there is bondage. Aham here means the ego-sense, the small self that claims things, and not the Self of the earlier chapters. Then comes the instruction, and its most important word is helayā. It means lightly, easily, as if in play. Having seen this, says Ashtavakra, do not grab anything and do not drop anything, and do it lightly. The tradition reads helayā as a guard against turning the teaching into another strain. If you fight the ego with the ego, you have doubled it. If you try hard to neither grasp nor reject, you are grasping at non-grasping. The light touch is the method. It resembles holding a bird: too tight and you hurt it, too loose and it goes. With this verse the four-verse chapter ends, having said in four verses what some texts take volumes to say.
Same thread in the Bhagavad Gita
Bhagavad Gita 2.71Krishna says peace comes to one who lives without craving, without 'mine' and without 'I'.Chapter 8, Bondage and freedom: Four verses that define bondage as the mind wanting and grieving, and freedom as its 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.