The verse and its meaning · Ashtavakra Gita · Ashtavakra Gita — Janaka Wakes

Fear Has No Foothold

Ashtavakra Gita 4.5

आब्रह्मस्तंबपर्यन्ते भूतग्रामे चतुर्विधे। विज्ञस्यैव हि सामर्थ्यमिच्छानिच्छाविवर्जने ॥ आत्मानमद्वयं कश्चिज्जानाति जगदीश्वरं। यद् वेत्ति तत्स कुरुते न भयं तस्य कुत्रचित्

Meaning · English

From Brahma down to the blade of grass, among the four kinds of beings, only the knower has the power to put wanting and not-wanting aside. Rarely does anyone know the Self as one without a second, the lord of the world. What he knows, that he does, and fear touches him nowhere.

The verse runs from the highest being, Brahma, down to a blade of grass, across all four kinds of born creatures. Among them all, Ashtavakra tells Janaka, only the vijna, the one who truly knows, has the power to let go of iccha and anicchā: wanting and not-wanting, craving and aversion. Everyone else is pulled by them, whatever their rank. Then he says how rare such a knower is. Few ever know the Self as advaya, without a second, with nothing standing beside it. The text calls this Self the lord of the world, jagadisvara, because nothing exists apart from it to rule over or to fear. The last clause says that what such a person knows, he acts from. His knowing and his doing are not split. And fear, bhaya, finds no place in him anywhere. The reason is given by the whole chain. Fear and craving both need a second thing, an other that may take or give. Where the Self is known as one, nothing is left outside to want or dread. The verse answers Janaka's wonder by naming what his waking really is. It is not a mood. It is the end of pulling and pushing.

A child lies awake afraid of a tall figure in the corner of the room. Someone switches on the light, and it is only a coat hanging on a hook. The fear did not need to be fought. It needed the second thing to be seen as not there. The coat stands for the world seen as other, and the light for knowing the Self as one.

1. Choose one small fear or craving today, such as a message you are waiting on or a sweet you keep reaching for. 2. Sit for five minutes and let it come up. Ask where it points: to what, outside you, does it say you are lacking or threatened by? 3. Notice whether the wanting or dread has a face or only a pull in the body. Describe it in one plain sentence. 4. Then go on with the day, and watch whether the pull is as strong an hour later.

A man sits in a hospital corridor while his father is inside for a scan. His mind runs two ways at once: let it be nothing, and let me not hear the worst. His chest is tight, his hands will not stay still, and he checks his phone again. Ordinary experience shows that wanting and dreading are two faces of one grip, and that both tighten when attention keeps leaping ahead. The verse, as the text's own teaching, points at the root of that grip: the sense of being a separate self with things outside it that can harm or reward. Where the Self is known as one, Ashtavakra says, craving and fear lose their ground, and the knower acts from what he knows. In the corridor, that would mean seeing the two pulls as pulls, and answering the nurse and sitting beside his father with a steadier mind. The verse does not promise that the scan will be clear, that grief will not come, or that a frightened person should skip the doctor's advice. It speaks of a knowing that is called rare.

अर्थ · हिन्दी

In this book

• Before: No One Can Restrain Him · Ashtavakra Gita 4.4
• All of Ashtavakra Gita · Ask Krishna about it

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