तत्त्वस्वरूपम्
Chapter 15
Tattva-svarūpam · 20 verses
Aṣṭāvakra has been speaking for fourteen chapters. Janaka has been answering for a few of them. Here Aṣṭāvakra returns to the long-form teaching, and the opening line is the one every reader should mark. The intelligent soul, he says, gets the whole point from whatever instruction comes to hand. The other one studies all his life and remains confused. Once that line is set, the chapter opens out into twenty of the most quotable verses in the entire dialogue. You are not the body. You are not the mind. You are pure awareness, cidrūpa, sākṣin, and you have always been free. The world rises in you the way a wave rises in the ocean, and it makes no more difference to you than the wave makes to the water. Aṣṭāvakra is not building an argument here. He is naming what is already true, in different sentences, from different angles, until something in the reader gives way and recognizes itself.
Aṣṭāvakra speaks
यथातथोपदेशेन कृतार्थः सत्त्वबुद्धिमान्। आजीवमपि जिज्ञासुः परस्तत्र विमुह्यति
yathātathopadeśena kṛtārthaḥ sattvabuddhimān ājīvamapi jijñāsuḥ parastatra vimuhyati
By whatever teaching comes to hand, the one of clear intelligence is fulfilled. The merely curious, even after a lifetime, stays bewildered.
मोक्षो विषयवैरस्यं बन्धो वैषयिको रसः। एतावदेव विज्ञानं यथेच्छसि तथा कुरु
mokṣo viṣayavairasyaṃ bandho vaiṣayiko rasaḥ etāvadeva vijñānaṃ yathecchasi tathā kuru
Liberation is the going-flat of taste for sense-objects. Bondage is the relish of them. This much, this alone, is knowing. Now do as you wish.
वाग्मिप्राज्ञानमहोद्योगं जनं मूकजडालसं। करोति तत्त्वबोधोऽयमतस्त्यक्तो बुभुक्षभिः
vāgmiprājñānamahodyogaṃ janaṃ mūkajaḍālasaṃ karoti tattvabodho'yamatastyakto bubhukṣabhiḥ
Knowledge of reality turns the eloquent, the brilliant, the energetic into the silent, the dull-seeming, the unhurried. So the hunters of pleasure leave it well alone.
न त्वं देहो न ते देहो भोक्ता कर्ता न वा भवान्। चिद्रूपोऽसि सदा साक्षी निरपेक्षः सुखं चर
na tvaṃ deho na te deho bhoktā kartā na vā bhavān cidrūpo'si sadā sākṣī nirapekṣaḥ sukhaṃ cara
You are not the body. The body is not yours. You are neither the enjoyer nor the doer. You are of the nature of consciousness, ever the witness, dependent on nothing. Wander happily.
रागद्वेषौ मनोधर्मौ न मनस्ते कदाचन। निर्विकल्पोऽसि बोधात्मा निर्विकारः सुखं चर
rāgadveṣau manodharmau na manaste kadācana nirvikalpo'si bodhātmā nirvikāraḥ sukhaṃ cara
Attachment and aversion are properties of the mind. The mind is never yours. You are without alternatives, of the nature of pure awareness, untouched by change. Wander happily.
सर्वभूतेषु चात्मानं सर्वभूतानि चात्मनि। विज्ञाय निरहंकारो निर्ममस्त्वं सुखी भव
sarvabhūteṣu cātmānaṃ sarvabhūtāni cātmani vijñāya nirahaṃkāro nirmamastvaṃ sukhī bhava
Knowing the Self in all beings and all beings in the Self, free of the I-maker and the mine-maker, be happy.
विश्वं स्फुरति यत्रेदं तरंगा इव सागरे। तत्त्वमेव न सन्देहश्चिन्मूर्ते विज्वरो भव
viśvaṃ sphurati yatredaṃ taraṃgā iva sāgare tattvameva na sandehaścinmūrte vijvaro bhava
The universe shimmers in you the way waves shimmer in the sea. You are that very reality. No doubt of it. O form of consciousness, cool the fever.
श्रद्धस्व तात श्रद्धस्व नात्र मोऽहं कुरुष्व भोः। ज्ञानस्वरूपो भगवानात्मा त्वं प्रकृतेः परः
śraddhasva tāta śraddhasva nātra mo'haṃ kuruṣva bhoḥ jñānasvarūpo bhagavānātmā tvaṃ prakṛteḥ paraḥ
Trust, my son. Trust. Do not be confused here. You are the Lord, the very form of knowing, the Self beyond prakṛti.
गुणैः संवेष्टितो देहस्तिष्ठत्यायाति याति च। आत्मा न गंता नागंता किमेनमनुशोचसि
guṇaiḥ saṃveṣṭito dehastiṣṭhatyāyāti yāti ca ātmā na gaṃtā nāgaṃtā kimenamanuśocasi
The body, wrapped in the guṇas, stays, comes, goes. The Self does not come or go. Why grieve for it?
देहस्तिष्ठतु कल्पान्तं गच्छत्वद्यैव वा पुनः। क्व वृद्धिः क्व च वा हानिस्तव चिन्मात्ररूपिणः
dehastiṣṭhatu kalpāntaṃ gacchatvadyaiva vā punaḥ kva vṛddhiḥ kva ca vā hānistava cinmātrarūpiṇaḥ
Let the body last to the end of a kalpa or vanish today. For you, who are pure consciousness only, where is the gain, where the loss?
त्वय्यनंतमहांभोधौ विश्ववीचिः स्वभावतः। उदेतु वास्तमायातु न ते वृद्धिर्न वा क्षतिः
tvayyanaṃtamahāṃbhodhau viśvavīciḥ svabhāvataḥ udetu vāstamāyātu na te vṛddhirna vā kṣatiḥ
In you, the boundless ocean, the wave of the world rises and sets of its own nature. Nothing is added to you. Nothing is taken away.
तात चिन्मात्ररूपोऽसि न ते भिन्नमिदं जगत्। अतः कस्य कथं कुत्र हेयोपादेयकल्पना
tāta cinmātrarūpo'si na te bhinnamidaṃ jagat ataḥ kasya kathaṃ kutra heyopādeyakalpanā
Son, you are of the nature of consciousness alone. The world is not other than you. So for whom, how, where can the project of accepting and rejecting even arise?
एकस्मिन्नव्यये शान्ते चिदाकाशेऽमले त्वयि। कुतो जन्म कुतो कर्म कुतोऽहंकार एव च
ekasminnavyaye śānte cidākāśe'male tvayi kuto janma kuto karma kuto'haṃkāra eva ca
In you, the one, undecaying, peaceful, the unstained space of awareness: where is birth, where karma, where the I-maker at all?
यत्त्वं पश्यसि तत्रैकस्त्वमेव प्रतिभाससे। किं पृथक् भासते स्वर्णात् कटकांगदनूपुरम्
yattvaṃ paśyasi tatraikastvameva pratibhāsase kiṃ pṛthak bhāsate svarṇāt kaṭakāṃgadanūpuram
Whatever you look at, the one shining there is you. Do bracelet, armlet, anklet appear as anything other than gold?
अयं सोऽहमयं नाहं विभागमिति संत्यज। सर्वमात्मेति निश्चित्य निःसङ्कल्पः सुखी भव
ayaṃ so'hamayaṃ nāhaṃ vibhāgamiti saṃtyaja sarvamātmeti niścitya niḥsaṅkalpaḥ sukhī bhava
Drop this dividing. This is I, this is not I. Decide: all is Self. Be without intention. Be happy.
तवैवाज्ञानतो विश्वं त्वमेकः परमार्थतः। त्वत्तोऽन्यो नास्ति संसारी नासंसारी च कश्चन
tavaivājñānato viśvaṃ tvamekaḥ paramārthataḥ tvatto'nyo nāsti saṃsārī nāsaṃsārī ca kaścana
It is your own ignorance that makes the world. In ultimate truth you are one alone. There is no other transmigrating soul. There is no one outside transmigration either.
भ्रान्तिमात्रमिदं विश्वं न किंचिदिति निश्चयी। निर्वासनः स्फूर्तिमात्रो न किंचिदिव शाम्यति
bhrāntimātramidaṃ viśvaṃ na kiṃciditi niścayī nirvāsanaḥ sphūrtimātro na kiṃcidiva śāmyati
Knowing for certain that the world is mere appearance, that none of it is anything, the desireless one, pure shining, is quieted as if into nothing.
एक एव भवांभोधावासीदस्ति भविष्यति। न ते बन्धोऽस्ति मोक्षो वा कृत्यकृत्यः सुखं चर
eka eva bhavāṃbhodhāvāsīdasti bhaviṣyati na te bandho'sti mokṣo vā kṛtyakṛtyaḥ sukhaṃ cara
In the ocean of becoming, one alone has been, is, will be. For you there is neither bondage nor liberation. Your work is done. Wander happily.
मा सङ्कल्पविकल्पाभ्यां चित्तं क्षोभय चिन्मय। उपशाम्य सुखं तिष्ठ स्वात्मन्यानन्दविग्रहे
mā saṅkalpavikalpābhyāṃ cittaṃ kṣobhaya cinmaya upaśāmya sukhaṃ tiṣṭha svātmanyānandavigrahe
Do not stir the mind with intention and counter-intention, O you of the nature of awareness. Quiet down. Rest happily in the Self that is the very form of bliss.
त्यजैव ध्यानं सर्वत्र मा किंचिद् हृदि धारय। आत्मा त्वं मुक्त एवासि किं विमृश्य करिष्यसि
tyajaiva dhyānaṃ sarvatra mā kiṃcid hṛdi dhāraya ātmā tvaṃ mukta evāsi kiṃ vimṛśya kariṣyasi
Drop even meditation. Hold nothing in the heart. You are the Self. You are already free. What will analysis accomplish?
The chapter opens with a sentence that filters its own readers. Yathā-tathā-upadeśena kṛtārthaḥ sattva-buddhimān. By any teaching at all, the one of clear intelligence is already accomplished. Yathā-tathā is the key compound: by this teaching or that, by whatever instruction happens to come, the sincere one is fulfilled. And the opposite sits in the second half: ājīvam api jijñāsuḥ parastatra vimuhyati. The other one, the merely curious, stays bewildered for an entire life. Ājīvam is striking: not for a year, not for a decade, ājīvam, lifelong. Aṣṭāvakra is not flattering his own teaching. He is naming the variable that decides everything, and the variable is not the teaching. It is the listener.
Verse 15.2 lands the definition of bondage and liberation in a single shloka. Mokṣo viṣaya-vairasyaṃ bandho vaiṣayiko rasaḥ. Liberation is the going-flat of taste for sense-objects. Bondage is the relish of them. Vairasya literally means tastelessness, the sweetness of the world losing its sweetness. Rasa is juice, savor, the pull. Then the line closes: etāvad eva vijñānaṃ yathecchasi tathā kuru. This much, this alone, is knowing. Now do as you wish. There is no further teaching to wait for. The whole science fits in two lines.
Verse 15.3 sketches what tattva-bodha, knowledge of reality, does to a person. It makes the eloquent silent, the proud humble, the energetic still. Vāgmi-prājña-mahodyoga becomes mūka-jaḍa-ālasa. The one full of words and brilliant strategies becomes mute, dull-seeming, unhurried. So the seekers of enjoyment, the bubhukṣa, drop tattva-bodha like a hot coal. It does not serve their game.
Then the great refrain begins. Na tvaṃ deho na te deho. You are not the body. The body is not yours. Bhoktā kartā na vā bhavān. You are neither the enjoyer nor the doer. Cidrūpo'si sadā sākṣī nirapekṣaḥ sukhaṃ cara. You are of the nature of consciousness, ever the witness, dependent on nothing, wander happily. This is the imperative Aṣṭāvakra returns to: sukhaṃ cara, sukhī bhava, walk in happiness, be happy. Not a wish. An instruction.
Verse 15.5 names attachment and aversion as properties of mind, manodharmau, then says: the mind is never yours. Nirvikalpo'si bodhātmā. You are without alternatives, of the nature of pure awareness. Verse 15.6 brings in the Gita's familiar image, the Self in all beings and all beings in the Self, then adds nirahaṃkāro nirmamas tvaṃ sukhī bhava: without I-maker, without mine-maker, be happy.
Verse 15.7 gives the ocean simile. Viśvaṃ sphurati yatredaṃ taraṃgā iva sāgare. The universe shimmers in you the way waves shimmer in the sea. Tattvam eva na sandehaḥ. You are that very reality, no doubt of it. Cinmūrte vijvaro bhava. O form of consciousness, be free of fever. Jvara is fever, and vijvara is the cooling. The whole pursuit of liberation is a fever.
Verse 15.8 raises the register to direct address. Śraddhasva tāta śraddhasva. Trust, son, trust. Jñāna-svarūpo bhagavān ātmā tvaṃ prakṛteḥ paraḥ. You are the lord of the nature of knowledge itself, beyond prakṛti. Bhagavān applied to ātman: not God outside, God within, identical with you.
Verses 15.9 through 15.11 use the body as a foil. The body, wound about by the guṇas, comes and goes. The Self neither comes nor goes. Let the body last till the end of a kalpa or vanish today: where, in the one who is pure consciousness, is gain or loss? In you, the infinite ocean, the wave of the world rises and falls of its own accord. None of it adds to you. None of it takes from you.
Verse 15.12 follows with the conclusion that follows from this: if you are of the nature of consciousness alone and the world is not separate from you, then for whom, how, and where does the project of accepting some things and rejecting others, heya-upādeya-kalpanā, even arise? The whole calculus collapses when its subject is recognized.
Verses 15.13 to 15.17 build a series of impossibilities. In the one avyaya, undecaying, śānta, peaceful, cidākāśa amala, the unstained space of awareness, where is birth, where is karma, where is the I-maker? You see only yourself wherever you look: do bracelets and armlets and anklets appear as anything other than gold? Drop the distinction this is me and this is not me. Decide: everything is Self. Be without intention, niḥsaṅkalpa, be happy. The world is yours by your own ignorance, paramārthataḥ you are one alone, and there is no other transmigrating soul.
Verse 15.18 returns the perspective to its origin. Eka eva bhavāmbhodhāv āsīd asti bhaviṣyati. In the ocean of becoming, one alone has been, is, will be. Na te bandho'sti mokṣo vā. For you there is neither bondage nor liberation. Kṛtya-kṛtyaḥ sukhaṃ cara. Your work is done, wander happily.
The chapter closes with two imperatives. Verse 15.19: do not stir the mind with intention and counter-intention, saṅkalpa-vikalpa. Be still and rest in the Self that is the form of bliss. And verse 15.20, the most radical: tyajaiva dhyānaṃ sarvatra mā kiṃcid hṛdi dhāraya. Drop all meditation. Hold nothing in the heart. Ātmā tvaṃ mukta evāsi kiṃ vimṛśya kariṣyasi. You are the Self, you are already free, what is there to investigate, what is there left to do?
Read the first verse once more. By any teaching that comes, the one of clear intelligence is fulfilled. The merely curious can study a whole lifetime and remain bewildered.
This is not Aṣṭāvakra being cynical about seekers. It is Aṣṭāvakra naming what every sincere teacher has eventually had to face. The information is not the obstacle. The amount of teaching is not the obstacle. There are people who have heard one sentence and understood. There are people who have read every book and still arrived nowhere. The variable is not in the teaching. The variable is in the one receiving.
Sattva-buddhi. Clear intelligence. Not clever intelligence. Sattva is the quality of clarity, of luminous balance, of a mind that has stopped trying to outrun itself. A sattva-buddhi hears the teaching and lets it land. A clever mind hears the teaching and immediately checks it against the inner library: does this match what I already think, does this contradict that other tradition, does this need refinement, does this need rebuttal. The teaching never gets in. It dies in the foyer.
Notice what Aṣṭāvakra is doing structurally. He is the teacher. Janaka heard him in chapter 1, gave a long, intoxicated response in chapter 2, and from there the dialogue has moved by turns. Now Aṣṭāvakra returns to teach again. The first thing he says is: if you can receive a single sentence, you are done. The remaining nineteen verses are the gift to the one who could not receive the first sentence yet. Aṣṭāvakra is not impatient. He simply tells the truth: the whole chapter is for you, and you do not need the whole chapter.
Then comes the formulation of bondage and liberation that has no equal in compactness. Mokṣo viṣaya-vairasyaṃ. Liberation is the going-flat of taste for objects. Bandho vaiṣayiko rasaḥ. Bondage is the relish for them. Etāvad eva vijñānaṃ. This much is the whole knowing. Yathecchasi tathā kuru. Now do as you wish.
Look carefully at what this is saying and what it is not. It is not saying you must hate the world. Vairasya is not aversion. It is not the fierce withdrawal of the ascetic who fights desire. It is something quieter. It is the sweetness draining away. You held a piece of fruit and the juice was once intoxicating. Now you hold the same fruit and the juice has lost its hold. Not because you forced it. Because you saw through it. The hunger that ate the fruit was always the hunger of an aham, an I-sense, that was itself imagined. The Self that you actually are was never the eater. The hunger was a story. When the story thins, the relish thins. The fruit can still be eaten. It just no longer rules.
Yathecchasi tathā kuru. Do as you wish. This is one of the most generous instructions in scripture. Once the relish is gone, action does not need to be regulated by external rules. The actions that arise from a Self that does not crave are already aligned. Aṣṭāvakra is not handing you a license. He is reporting what the post-craving life looks like from the inside: it is free, and it does no harm, because the engine of harm was always the craving.
Now the chapter proper. Verses 4 through 8 form a kind of mantra block. Na tvaṃ deho. Bhoktā kartā na vā bhavān. Cidrūpo'si sadā sākṣī. Nirvikalpo'si bodhātmā. Sarva-bhūteṣu cātmānaṃ. Cinmūrte vijvaro bhava. Śraddhasva tāta. Trust, son. Trust. The block does not argue. It declares. The teacher names the truth in different sentences from different angles, and the student is asked, simply, to trust.
This is the move many readers miss. They want Aṣṭāvakra to prove the Self. He does not prove anything. He names it, in your own ear, as you. Na tvaṃ deho. You are not the body. He does not say: here are six arguments against identification with the body. He says: you are not the body. The proof is not in argumentation. The proof is in the standing of the sentence in your own awareness. You read it, and either it lands or it does not. If it lands, you are done. If it does not land, the chapter has nineteen more attempts.
Which is, of course, why the chapter is twenty verses long. Aṣṭāvakra knows that the first sentence is enough for the sattva-buddhi and not enough for everyone else. So he says it twenty times. The ocean in the sea. The gold in the bracelet. The single one in the manifold. The space of awareness, undecaying, unstained. Each verse is a fresh statement of the same thing, in case the previous one did not catch.
The pull of this chapter for the contemporary reader, more than two thousand years after it was composed, gathers in two places. There is verse 18: kṛtya-kṛtyaḥ sukhaṃ cara, your work is done, wander happily. The spiritual life, as most of us have inherited it, is a project. Something to be completed. A path that ends in liberation. Aṣṭāvakra closes the project. He says: liberation is not where the path ends. Liberation is where the path was always standing. Eka eva bhavāmbhodhāv āsīd asti bhaviṣyati. One alone, in the ocean of becoming, has been, is, will be. That one is you. There is no work left.
And then verse 20, the most startling line in the chapter. Tyajaiva dhyānaṃ. Drop even meditation. Mā kiṃcid hṛdi dhāraya. Do not hold anything in the heart. Ātmā tvaṃ mukta evāsi. You are the Self, already free. Kiṃ vimṛśya kariṣyasi. What will you accomplish by analysis?
The whole edifice of practice gets named, and then gently set down. Not because practice is bad. Because practice belongs to one who thinks he is not yet there. Aṣṭāvakra is speaking to the one who has heard. To that one, the practice has done its work. Now the practice itself is to be released. To go on practicing after the recognition is to keep brushing the floor in a room that is already clean.
What the chapter asks of you is not effort. It asks something stranger. It asks trust. Śraddhasva tāta śraddhasva. Trust, my son. Trust. Trust that the one teaching you is not asking you to do anything. The one teaching you is asking you to stop, and to recognize what was already the case before you started.
Ramana Maharshi sat at Arunachala for fifty-four years. The vast majority of his teaching was silence. When he did speak, he often used a sentence very close to Aṣṭāvakra's: summa iru, in Tamil, simply be. Not be in a special way. Not meditate. Just be. He pointed to the heart on the right side of the chest and said the I-thought rises from there, and if you trace it back, you will find that the I-thought was the only knot, and at the end of the tracing there is no knot, only the aham-sphuraṇa, the pure shining of awareness. He was teaching verse 15.20 in his own language. There is nothing to investigate. You are already free. He gave the method, ātma-vicāra, self-inquiry, but he taught it as a stairway that ends in its own dissolution. You inquire until inquiry is no longer needed. Then you rest. Aṣṭāvakra would have nodded.
Nisargadatta Maharaj kept a small bidi shop in a back lane of Bombay, lived above it, and spoke to whoever climbed the stairs. He returned again and again to a single instruction. Hold onto the sense I am, aham asmi, without any qualifier. Not I am this, not I am that. Just I am. He would say it is the only doorway. And then, when the seeker had stayed with the I-am long enough for the I to thin and only the am to remain, Nisargadatta would push further. Drop even the I-am. Because that too is the mind's last hold. The pure being you actually are has no need of even the sense of being. This is precisely Aṣṭāvakra's niḥsaṅkalpa, his galita-buddhi. Drop meditation. Drop holding. You are already free.
Ādi Śaṅkara wrote the Vivekacūḍāmaṇi in this same key. The student in his text begs to be told the means of liberation, and Śaṅkara walks through viveka, discrimination, vairāgya, dispassion, the six qualities, the longing for liberation. Then, at the end of the long instruction, Śaṅkara delivers what is essentially Aṣṭāvakra's last verse: brahmaivāhaṃ na saṃsārī, I am Brahman alone, not a transmigrating soul. Once that is known, what is left to be done? Śaṅkara had to build the path because he was teaching householders and renunciates with very different capacities. But the path he built was always pointing to a place that was always already standing. His commentaries are footnotes to Aṣṭāvakra 15.
The Avadhūta Gītā of Dattātreya is perhaps the closest Sanskrit text in tone. Datta sings: how shall I salute the Self that is nirvikalpa, nirākāra, nirabhāva? There is no two. There is no other. He does not teach a method. He sings, in verse after verse, what Aṣṭāvakra declares: the all is Self, the all has always been Self, and the one singing and the one being sung to are not two. The Avadhūta Gītā reads like a hymn version of Aṣṭāvakra 15. The same recognition. A different musical key.
Lakṣmaṇa Śarmā of Tiruvannamalai, the Tamil disciple who took down Maharṣi Vacana Mālā directly from Ramana, wrote in his own verses that the Self does not need to be reached, only ceased from being missed. This is Aṣṭāvakra in another voice. The whole apparatus of seeking is the apparatus of missing. When the missing stops, the seeking stops, and what was sought is recognized as what was always already here.
From the Christian apophatic tradition, Meister Eckhart sometimes meets Aṣṭāvakra at the door, though the grammar is not identical and the temptation to force convergence must be resisted. Eckhart preached that the soul's deepest ground is one with God's ground, ein grunt. He preached that the perfect soul should not be praying for anything because what it would pray for is already its own. This is not Aṣṭāvakra's kaivalya, but it is in conversation with verse 15.20: drop even the prayer. You are the Self, already free. Eckhart paid with a posthumous condemnation for sentences not unlike this. Aṣṭāvakra's culture had room for them. Eckhart's did not. But the sentence stood.
Drop even meditation. Hold nothing in the heart. You are already free. What is there to investigate?
Scriptural References
The Self is one only, never born; the seer in all seeing, the witness of all knowledge.
यद्वै तन्न पश्यति पश्यन्वै तन्न पश्यति । न हि द्रष्टुर्दृष्टेर्विपरिलोपो विद्यतेऽविनाशित्वात् ।
yad vai tan na paśyati paśyan vai tan na paśyati | na hi draṣṭur dṛṣṭer viparilopo vidyate'vināśitvāt |
When it does not see, it is still seeing, though it sees no second; for the seer's seeing is never lost, because the seer is indestructible.
Yājñavalkya to Janaka on the *sākṣin* who has no other object. Aṣṭāvakra 15.4's *cidrūpo'si sadā sākṣī* rests on this Upaniṣadic ground; and Janaka, the king who is hearing Aṣṭāvakra, is the same king who heard Yājñavalkya.
Whoever sees the Self in all beings and all beings in the Self has no occasion to hate.
यस्तु सर्वाणि भूतान्यात्मन्येवानुपश्यति । सर्वभूतेषु चात्मानं ततो न विजुगुप्सते ॥
yas tu sarvāṇi bhūtāny ātmany evānupaśyati | sarva-bhūteṣu cātmānaṃ tato na vijugupsate ||
The one who beholds all beings in the Self alone, and the Self in all beings, no longer turns away in revulsion from anything.
The phrasing of Aṣṭāvakra 15.6, *sarva-bhūteṣu cātmānaṃ sarva-bhūtāni cātmani*, lifts the Īśā Upaniṣad's exact image and binds it to the instruction *sukhī bhava*.
I have no work in the three worlds, nothing left to attain, yet I still act.
न मे पार्थास्ति कर्तव्यं त्रिषु लोकेषु किञ्चन । नानवाप्तमवाप्तव्यं वर्त एव च कर्मणि ॥
na me pārthāsti kartavyaṃ triṣu lokeṣu kiñcana | nānavāptam avāptavyaṃ varta eva ca karmaṇi ||
Pārtha, there is no work for me in the three worlds, nothing unattained that I must attain, and yet I act.
Krishna names *kṛta-kṛtya*, the one whose work is done, who acts because life acts. Aṣṭāvakra 15.18's *kṛtya-kṛtyaḥ sukhaṃ cara* hands this same status to every reader who has recognized the Self.
Brahma-Jñānāvalī-Mālā 20 (attributed to Śaṅkara)
Brahman alone is real; the world is appearance; the individual self is not other than Brahman.
ब्रह्म सत्यं जगन्मिथ्या जीवो ब्रह्मैव नापरः ।
brahma satyaṃ jagan mithyā jīvo brahmaiva nāparaḥ |
Brahman alone is real, the world is appearance, the individual self is Brahman alone and no other.
The famous Advaita summary line, traditionally attributed to Śaṅkara. It appears in the *Brahma-Jñānāvalī-Mālā*, not in the *Vivekacūḍāmaṇi*. Aṣṭāvakra 15.16-17 is the same recognition unrolled into the second person: *tavaivājñānato viśvaṃ tvam ekaḥ paramārthataḥ*.
I am pure awareness; there is no birth for me, no death, no bondage, no liberation.
न मे बन्धो न मे मोक्षो न मे चेज्या कदाचन ।
na me bandho na me mokṣo na me cejyā kadācana |
For me there is no bondage, no liberation, no ritual at any time.
Datta's refrain *na me bandho na me mokṣo* is the closest Sanskrit parallel to Aṣṭāvakra 15.18's *na te bandho'sti mokṣo vā*. Two voices, one recognition.