The verse and its meaning · Ashtavakra Gita · Ashtavakra Gita — Janaka's Last Words

Enough Talk, Rest

Ashtavakra Gita 19.8

अलं त्रिवर्गकथया योगस्य कथयाप्यलं। अलं विज्ञानकथया विश्रान्तस्य ममात्मनि

Meaning · English

Enough of talk about the three aims of life. Enough of talk about yoga. Enough of talk about knowledge. For me, who have come to rest in the Self, all such talk is finished.

Three words carry the verse. Trivarga is the set of three ordinary aims of a human life: duty, wealth and pleasure. Yoga is the discipline of joining, the practice by which a person works toward the goal. Vijnana is knowing in a distinct, worked-out way, from vi, apart, and jna, to know. The last word, vishranta, means fully rested, from a root meaning to tire. Janaka has stopped walking because he has arrived. The clauses go one by one. Talk of the three aims is talk of what to chase in the world. Talk of yoga is talk of how to reach something not yet reached. Talk of knowledge is talk of what to understand. Janaka sets all three aside, since each speaks of a gap between the person and what is sought. In his realization he finds no gap. He rests in the Self, which was never absent. The question behind it is the one Janaka first put to Ashtavakra: how are knowledge, freedom and dispassion won? The answer he gives now is that the winning is over. The text does not call the talk false. It says the talk has done its work for one who has arrived. It asks the listener to see what all the talk was pointing toward, and to notice that the pointing ends in rest.

A traveller walks a long road with a map, stopping often to check it. At last he stands in his own courtyard, the map still in his hand. He folds it and puts it down. The map was never wrong, but it is of no use at the door. The three kinds of talk are the map; the Self is the house.

1. Choose one evening this week and sit for ten minutes with no book, phone or plan, in a chair you already own. 2. When your mind starts listing goals, methods or things to understand, just notice that it is making a map. Let the list stay unfinished. 3. Notice what is left when the list stops: the plain fact of being here, awake and breathing. 4. Afterwards, write one line about how that felt. Do not set a target for tomorrow.

A man sits on the stairs on a Sunday afternoon with three lists beside him: one for money, one for health, one for his practice. He has read about all of it for a year and is tired. Nothing on the lists is wrong, yet the reading has begun to feel like another job. The verse would change the moment in steps. First, he sees that the planning has become its own noise, a kind of talk. Second, he puts the lists down without throwing them away. Third, he stays on the stairs with no aim for a few minutes. In the text's teaching, what he rests in is the Self, which was there before the lists and does not wait for them to be finished. Ordinary experience agrees that a mind kept planning cannot rest, and that rest does not make a person lazy. The verse does not promise that the bills get paid, that illness eases, or that planning is never needed. It also does not replace a doctor or an adviser where one is wanted. It speaks of one who has arrived, and says only that for him the talk of arriving is over.

अर्थ · हिन्दी

In this book

• Before: Near, Far, Life, Death · Ashtavakra Gita 19.6
• Next: Nothing Left to Locate · Ashtavakra Gita 20.1
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