स्वास्थ्यम्
Chapter 16
Svāsthyam · 11 verses
Aṣṭāvakra has been pointing at the Self in different ways for fifteen chapters. Now he names what the pointing is for. *Svāsthya.* Standing in oneself. The chapter title is the word itself, and the eleven verses turn it from the side of effort to the side of rest. You read commentaries, you perform actions, you sit in samādhi, you take up renunciation, you take up the world, and through all of it the mind keeps wanting one more thing. Aṣṭāvakra says: that wanting is the only thing that prevents the rest you are searching for. The chapter ends with one of his sharpest sentences. Hara himself, Hari himself, even the Lord seated on the lotus could be your teacher, and still you will not have *svāsthya* until you forget the whole thing. Forgetting, here, is not a failure of memory. It is the dropping of the seeker, which is the only obstacle between you and what you already are.
Aṣṭāvakra speaks
आचक्ष्व शृणु वा तात नानाशास्त्राण्यनेकशः। तथापि न तव स्वास्थ्यं सर्वविस्मरणाद् ऋते
ācakṣva śṛṇu vā tāta nānāśāstrāṇyanekaśaḥ tathāpi na tava svāsthyaṃ sarvavismaraṇād ṛte
Recite, my son, or listen to the many scriptures, many times over. Even so, you will not stand in yourself without forgetting the whole.
भोगं कर्म समाधिं वा कुरु विज्ञ तथापि ते। चित्तं निरस्तसर्वाशमत्यर्थं रोचयिष्यति
bhogaṃ karma samādhiṃ vā kuru vijña tathāpi te cittaṃ nirastasarvāśamatyarthaṃ rocayiṣyati
Pursue enjoyment, action, or samādhi, learned one. Even then your mind will love only the state in which all longing has been thrown out.
आयासात्सकलो दुःखी नैनं जानाति कश्चन। अनेनैवोपदेशेन धन्यः प्राप्नोति निर्वृतिम्
āyāsātsakalo duḥkhī nainaṃ jānāti kaścana anenaivopadeśena dhanyaḥ prāpnoti nirvṛtim
Everyone suffers from striving. No one knows it. By this teaching alone, the fortunate one reaches peace.
व्यापारे खिद्यते यस्तु निमेषोन्मेषयोरपि। तस्यालस्य धुरीणस्य सुखं नन्यस्य कस्यचित्
vyāpāre khidyate yastu nimeṣonmeṣayorapi tasyālasya dhurīṇasya sukhaṃ nanyasya kasyacit
The one who is exhausted even by the activity of blinking, the champion of disinclination, has happiness. No one else.
इदं कृतमिदं नेति द्वंद्वैर्मुक्तं यदा मनः। धर्मार्थकाममोक्षेषु निरपेक्षं तदा भवेत्
idaṃ kṛtamidaṃ neti dvaṃdvairmuktaṃ yadā manaḥ dharmārthakāmamokṣeṣu nirapekṣaṃ tadā bhavet
When the mind is free of the pairs, this is done, this is not, then it becomes indifferent even to dharma, wealth, pleasure, and liberation.
विरक्तो विषयद्वेष्टा रागी विषयलोलुपः। ग्रहमोक्षविहीनस्तु न विरक्तो न रागवान्
virakto viṣayadveṣṭā rāgī viṣayalolupaḥ grahamokṣavihīnastu na virakto na rāgavān
The renunciant hates the sense-world. The grasper craves it. The one free of holding and releasing is neither.
हेयोपादेयता तावत्संसारविटपांकुरः। स्पृहा जीवति यावद् वै निर्विचारदशास्पदम्
heyopādeyatā tāvatsaṃsāraviṭapāṃkuraḥ spṛhā jīvati yāvad vai nirvicāradaśāspadam
The attitude of accepting and rejecting is the sprout of the saṃsāra-tree. Longing lives as long as the seat of non-inquiry lives.
प्रवृत्तौ जायते रागो निर्वृत्तौ द्वेष एव हि। निर्द्वन्द्वो बालवद् धीमान् एवमेव व्यवस्थितः
pravṛttau jāyate rāgo nirvṛttau dveṣa eva hi nirdvandvo bālavad dhīmān evameva vyavasthitaḥ
In activity, attachment is born. In withdrawal, aversion. The wise one, free of the pair, simply stands as is, like a child.
हातुमिच्छति संसारं रागी दुःखजिहासया। वीतरागो हि निर्दुःखस्तस्मिन्नपि न खिद्यति
hātumicchati saṃsāraṃ rāgī duḥkhajihāsayā vītarāgo hi nirduḥkhastasminnapi na khidyati
The grasper wants to give up saṃsāra to escape suffering. The one without grasping, already free of suffering, is not troubled even by it.
यस्याभिमानो मोक्षेऽपि देहेऽपि ममता तथा। न च ज्ञानी न वा योगी केवलं दुःखभागसौ
yasyābhimāno mokṣe'pi dehe'pi mamatā tathā na ca jñānī na vā yogī kevalaṃ duḥkhabhāgasau
The one who is identified with liberation, and who still owns the body as mine: he is no knower, no yogi. He is only a sufferer.
हरो यद्युपदेष्टा ते हरिः कमलजोऽपि वा। तथापि न तव स्वाथ्यं सर्वविस्मरणादृते
haro yadyupadeṣṭā te hariḥ kamalajo'pi vā tathāpi na tava svāthyaṃ sarvavismaraṇādṛte
Even if Hara should be your teacher, or Hari, or the lotus-born Brahmā: even so, you will not stand in yourself without forgetting the whole.
Svāsthya is the keyword of the chapter and it deserves its own pause. Sva is self. Stha is standing. Svāsthya is the standing in oneself, and in colloquial Sanskrit and later Indian languages it is also the ordinary word for health. Aṣṭāvakra is pressing both senses. The well-being you seek and the standing-in-the-Self you seek are not two things.
Verse 16.1 opens with the cool affront. Ācakṣva śṛṇu vā tāta nānā-śāstrāṇy anekaśaḥ. Recite, my son, or listen, to the many scriptures, many times over. Tathāpi na tava svāsthyaṃ sarvavismaraṇād ṛte. Even so, you will not have svāsthya without the forgetting of all of it. Sarva-vismaraṇa. The forgetting of everything. The line is shocking inside a tradition that prizes śruti and smṛti. Aṣṭāvakra is not anti-scripture. He is naming the limit of scripture. Scripture brought you here. To stand here, you must put it down.
Verse 16.2 sets the same diagnostic from the other side. Bhogaṃ karma samādhiṃ vā kuru vijña tathāpi te. Pursue enjoyment, or action, or samādhi, learned one. Cittaṃ nirasta-sarvāśam atyarthaṃ rocayiṣyati. Even then your mind will only really love the state where all longing has been thrown out, nirasta-sarvāśa. The mind has its own preference, and Aṣṭāvakra names it. The mind is happy only when wanting has gone.
Verse 16.3 places the weight on effort itself. Āyāsāt sakalo duḥkhī. Everyone suffers from striving. Nainaṃ jānāti kaścana. Nobody knows this. Anenaivopadeśena dhanyaḥ prāpnoti nirvṛtim. By this teaching alone, the fortunate one reaches peace. Āyāsa is the active strain, the leaning into. The Buddha called it taṇhā. Aṣṭāvakra calls it the universal disease. The cure is in the seeing.
Verse 16.4 carries the comic edge that runs through the chapter. Vyāpāre khidyate yas tu nimeṣa-unmeṣayor api. The one who is exhausted even by the activity of blinking. Tasyālasya-dhurīṇasya sukhaṃ na anyasya kasyacit. For that champion of laziness, there is happiness. For no one else. Ālasya is sloth, and dhurīṇa is the bull at the head of a yoke. The chief sluggard. Aṣṭāvakra is having fun here. He means: the one for whom even effort has become an unwanted burden has arrived at svāsthya. The doer has gone quiet.
Verse 16.5 finds the mind that has gone past dvandva, the pair-opposites. Idaṃ kṛtam idaṃ neti dvandvair muktaṃ yadā manaḥ. When the mind is free of the pairs, this is done, this is not done. Dharmārthakāmamokṣeṣu nirapekṣaṃ tadā bhavet. Then it becomes indifferent even to dharma, artha, kāma, and mokṣa. The classical four aims of human life. Aṣṭāvakra calmly says: when the mind has truly rested, it does not pursue even liberation. Mokṣa itself is on the list of pursuits that the resting mind has set down.
Verse 16.6 brings the equation across. Virakto viṣaya-dveṣṭā, rāgī viṣaya-lolupaḥ. The renunciant hates the world. The grasper craves it. Grahamokṣa-vihīnas tu na virakto na rāgavān. The one free from both holding and releasing is neither renunciant nor grasper. This is the definition that returns through the chapter and into the next. The truly free are not on either side. They are not the ones who took up the world. They are not the ones who renounced it. They are the ones for whom the grammar of holding and releasing has gone quiet.
Verse 16.7 names spṛhā, longing, as the root. Heyopādeyatā tāvat saṃsāra-viṭapa-āṅkuraḥ. The attitude of accepting and rejecting is the very sprout of the saṃsāra-tree. Spṛhā jīvati yāvad vai nirvicāra-daśā-aspadam. Longing lives as long as the state of non-discrimination is its seat. Until vicāra, true inquiry, lands, the longing for and against the world keeps the tree growing.
Verse 16.8 puts it cleanly. Pravṛttau jāyate rāgo nirvṛttau dveṣa eva hi. In activity, attachment is born. In withdrawal, aversion. Nirdvandvo bālavad dhīmān evam eva vyavasthitaḥ. The wise one, free of pairs, simply stands as is, like a child. Bālavat, like a child. Not the child as a sentimental figure. The child who is not yet split into pursuer and renouncer.
Verse 16.9 sharpens the trap. Hātum icchati saṃsāraṃ rāgī duḥkha-jihāsayā. The one with attachment wants to give up saṃsāra in order to escape suffering. Vītarāgo hi niḥ-duḥkhas tasminn api na khidyati. The one without attachment, already free of suffering, is not even troubled by saṃsāra. The whole project of renunciation is exposed as another form of grasping. The one who really has nothing to grasp also has nothing to push away.
Verse 16.10 names the symmetric failure on the spiritual side. Yasyābhimāno mokṣe'pi dehe'pi mamatā tathā. The one who is identified with liberation, who also identifies with the body. Na ca jñānī na vā yogī kevalaṃ duḥkhabhāg asau. He is neither a knower nor a yogi. He is only a sufferer. The seeker who has staked an ego on liberation is no closer to svāsthya than the one staked on possessions.
The chapter closes with the verse that names the limit of teaching itself. Haro yady upadeṣṭā te hariḥ kamalajo'pi vā. Even if Hara should be your teacher, or Hari, or the lotus-born Brahmā. Tathāpi na tava svāsthyaṃ sarva-vismaraṇāt ṛte. Even then you will not have svāsthya without forgetting the whole. The opening line is the closing line. Recite or hear scripture all you want. Even the supreme Gurus of the three-fold creation cannot give you what only your own forgetting will reveal.
Svāsthya. The standing in oneself. Read the chapter title once and you have the whole teaching. The rest of the chapter is the loosening of the grip that prevents it.
Notice what Aṣṭāvakra does not do. He does not give a meditation. He does not give a mantra. He does not give a contemplation. He does not even give a method of inquiry, which his own student Janaka has been receiving through the dialogue. Here, in the chapter named after standing in oneself, Aṣṭāvakra refuses every method. He says: forget all of it.
This is the chapter that scandalizes the reader who came looking for a technique. And it is also, for the reader who has been seeking a long time, the chapter that finally puts the search down.
Look at the structure. The first verse and the last verse are nearly identical sentences. Tathāpi na tava svāsthyaṃ sarva-vismaraṇāt ṛte. Even so, you will not have rest in the Self without the forgetting of everything. Aṣṭāvakra opens and closes with the same blow, like a teacher who knows the student will spend the chapter trying to escape it. He keeps the door closed. The teaching is in the seeing of the closed door.
What is the forgetting? It is not amnesia. It is not the abandonment of knowledge. The Vedic tradition prized memory as a primary spiritual faculty, and the word vismaraṇa in a brahmin's text would normally be a defect, a failure of smṛti. Aṣṭāvakra is using the word against the grain on purpose. He means: forget your career as a seeker. Forget what you read yesterday and the techniques you tried this morning. Forget who is supposed to be liberated and what liberation is supposed to feel like. The Self is not waiting at the end of the remembering. It is hidden under the remembering. Let it go and the Self stands.
This is the chapter's central move and it is the most refined teaching in the entire Aṣṭāvakra Gītā. The earlier chapters told you, in many ways, that you are the witness, the cidrūpa, the Self. Chapter 15 closed with tyajaiva dhyānaṃ: drop even meditation. Chapter 16 takes the next step. It names what the meditation was holding onto. It was holding onto the project of becoming free. Even the meditation was secretly clutching. Svāsthya will not arrive while anyone is reaching for it.
Now look at verses 6 through 9. Aṣṭāvakra describes a particular human type that arises around spiritual life. The virakta, the renunciant. The one who hates the world. The rāgī, the grasper. The one who loves the world. Aṣṭāvakra puts them on opposite sides, and then in the same line he places the truly free between them. Grahamokṣa-vihīnaḥ. Free of holding and releasing. Not a renunciant. Not a worldly person. Something else.
Why does he say this? Because the spiritual marketplace is full of renunciants. The robes, the silence, the carefully cultivated indifference to praise and blame. Aṣṭāvakra has seen them. He is not unkind, but he is precise. The renunciant is still in the same game as the grasper. He is just playing for the other team. Both think the world is real enough to either chase or flee. Svāsthya is not on either team's bench. It is in the one who has put down the game.
Verse 9 is the dagger. Hātum icchati saṃsāraṃ rāgī duḥkha-jihāsayā. The grasper wants to give up saṃsāra in order to escape pain. The grasper. Not the free one. The grasper is the one who works hardest at renunciation. And his renunciation is, secretly, a more refined form of the grasping he set out to overcome.
This is the line that any reader who has done a few years of practice will feel as a small wound. We can recognize ourselves here. The retreats we attended to escape the noise of the workplace. The diets we kept to escape the body. The meditation sessions we logged to escape the restless mind. All of it, in part, was duḥkha-jihāsā, the desire to flee suffering. Aṣṭāvakra does not condemn it. He just shows the engine. The engine is the same engine that wanted the promotion. The fuel has been redirected. The engine is still grasping.
Vītarāgo hi niḥ-duḥkhas tasminn api na khidyati. The one without longing, already free of suffering, is not troubled even by saṃsāra. The one who really has nothing to flee also has nothing to chase. The one for whom even saṃsāra has stopped being a problem has, by definition, no further use for renunciation. Svāsthya sits there.
Now verse 10. The flip side. Yasyābhimāno mokṣe'pi. The one who is identified with liberation. Dehe'pi mamatā. And who at the same time owns the body as me. He is neither a knower nor a yogi. He is just a sufferer. The seeker who has become attached to liberation, who carries it as a project, who measures himself against it, who feels he must achieve it: that one is no further along than the householder who measures himself against the size of his house. The currency has changed. The clutch is the same.
This is why the chapter ends with the line about Hara and Hari. Aṣṭāvakra is not blaspheming the great teachers. He is naming the limit of every external teaching. Even if Shiva himself instructed you, even if Vishnu, even if Brahmā, you would not stand in yourself without forgetting. What an extraordinary thing to say. The chapter that gives the project of self-recognition its proper name, svāsthya, also tells you that no external teacher can hand it to you. The greatest gurus in the three worlds could speak and you could listen, and still you would not have it. Because what you are looking for is not a thing to be taught. It is what is left when teaching stops.
What does the reader do with this? Not nothing. There is something to do, and Aṣṭāvakra has been showing it for sixteen chapters. The doing is the loosening. It is the seeing of the engine. It is the recognition of the grasping that runs even the most spiritual ambitions. The recognition is itself the vismaraṇa. When you see, clearly, that you have been clutching even at liberation, the clutching releases. You did not have to renounce the clutching. You simply saw it. And in the seeing, it went quiet. Svāsthya was always there, under the clutch. Now it stands.
The practical instruction the chapter leaves you with is closer to a posture than a practice. Notice. When you reach for the Self, notice the reaching. When you try to meditate yourself into freedom, notice the trying. When you praise the virakta in yourself, notice the praise. None of it needs to be stopped. It needs only to be seen. And the seeing thins it. The thinning is the chapter's whole teaching. The thinning is svāsthya.
Nisargadatta Maharaj sat for forty years in a small room in Khetwadi and taught the chapter without quoting it. The whole burden of his I Am That is verse 16.1 and verse 16.11 in dialogue. Visitors came carrying their practices, their gurus, their books. Nisargadatta would let them speak. Then he would say, with a steadiness that was its own teaching: drop all of that. Stay with the sense I am. Then drop even the I am. He had nothing else to teach. Reciting scripture had its place earlier, and he honored it. But for the seeker sitting in front of him, the next step was always away from the accumulated. Sarva-vismaraṇa. He was demonstrating the chapter every day.
Sadāśiva Brahmendra is the saint who walked verse 16.4. The Tanjore tradition tells of him wandering naked through the Cauvery delta, deaf to insult, eating when food was placed in his mouth and forgetting to eat when it was not. Once, the tradition says, he wandered into the field of a king during a hunt, and a soldier in irritation cut off his arm. Brahmendra walked on. He came back later for the arm only when reminded. The body was not his concern. He composed Sanskrit kīrtanas of dazzling clarity. Brahmaivāham na deho'ham na ca cittena sammataḥ: I am Brahman alone, not body, not the consenter to mind. He is the ālasya-dhurīṇa Aṣṭāvakra speaks of: the champion of the disinclined, the one whose doing had become so light that nothing was being held. Svāsthya was visible on him.
Ramana Maharshi, when asked about practice, would sometimes say in Tamil: summa iru. Just be. The questioner would press. But what should I do? Ramana would say it again. Summa iru. The questioner would protest: but I am too restless to just be. Ramana would nod. Then inquire. Trace the I-thought to its source. When the questioner reported back, full of techniques and complications, Ramana would gently bring it down to one move. Be. He was teaching verse 16.1. The many scriptures could be read. The many techniques could be applied. But the standing-in-the-Self would not come from any of them. It would come only from the dropping. The dropping was his whole instruction, dressed up in the language his students could receive.
Lakṣmaṇa Śarmā in Maharṣi Vacana Mālā records Ramana telling a seeker that the Self is realized only when the very wish to realize the Self subsides. This is Aṣṭāvakra 16.10 with a slightly different vocabulary. The one who is attached to liberation is not a knower. The wish for liberation, when it has become an attachment, is itself the obstacle. The dropping of the wish is the seeing. And the seeing is the svāsthya.
From the broader nondual span, the Ch'an tradition's Sengcan in the Hsin-hsin Ming is a near neighbor to Aṣṭāvakra here, though the grammar must not be collapsed. Sengcan opens by saying that the great way is without difficulty for the one who does not pick and choose. The phrasing moves in the neighborhood of grahamokṣa-vihīna, free of holding and releasing. He goes on to say that only when there is neither attachment nor aversion does the truth stand revealed, which lies close to the territory of 16.6. But the Hsin-hsin Ming is in literary Chinese, not Sanskrit, and Sengcan's Ch'an grammar of fa (dharma) and emptiness works differently from Aṣṭāvakra's cit. Each tradition arrives at its own ground. The neighborliness is genuine; the lexicons are not.
Even if Hara or Hari should be your teacher, you will not stand in yourself without forgetting the whole.
Scriptural References
The Self is not gained by speech or learning or much hearing; it reveals itself to the one whom it chooses.
नायमात्मा प्रवचनेन लभ्यो न मेधया न बहुना श्रुतेन ।
nāyam ātmā pravacanena labhyo na medhayā na bahunā śrutena |
This Self is not gained by recitation, nor by intellect, nor by much hearing.
The Upaniṣadic limit-line on śravaṇa. Aṣṭāvakra 16.1's *ācakṣva śṛṇu vā* echoes precisely the *pravacana* and *śruta* of Yama's teaching: even recitation and hearing of many scriptures will not give *svāsthya*.
Free of longing and possessiveness, with mind controlled by the Self, the renunciant attains the peace beyond all action.
निराशीर्यतचित्तात्मा त्यक्तसर्वपरिग्रहः । शारीरं केवलं कर्म कुर्वन्नाप्नोति किल्बिषम् ॥
nirāśīr yata-cittātmā tyakta-sarva-parigrahaḥ | śārīraṃ kevalaṃ karma kurvan nāpnoti kilbiṣam ||
Free of expectation, with mind and Self restrained, having let go of all possessing, doing only the bare action of the body, one incurs no fault.
Krishna's portrait of the *kṛta-kṛtya*, free from grasping. Aṣṭāvakra 16.6's *grahamokṣa-vihīna*, free of holding and releasing, is the same standing made into a definition.
When one is free from craving for the objects of sense, in renunciation of all that is willed, then one is said to have ascended to yoga.
यदा हि नेन्द्रियार्थेषु न कर्मस्वनुषज्जते । सर्वसङ्कल्पसन्न्यासी योगारूढस्तदोच्यते ॥
yadā hi nendriyārtheṣu na karmasv anuṣajjate | sarva-saṅkalpa-sannyāsī yogārūḍhas tadocyate ||
When one is no longer attached to sense-objects or to actions, having renounced all intentions, then one is said to have arrived at yoga.
Krishna's definition of *yogārūḍha* sits exactly on Aṣṭāvakra 16.5's *idaṃ kṛtam idaṃ neti dvandvair muktaṃ*: the mind released from the pairs done and not-done.
The Real is uncreated; bondage and liberation are both appearances in the mind that has not yet seen.
न निरोधो न चोत्पत्तिर्न बद्धो न च साधकः । न मुमुक्षुर्न वै मुक्त इत्येषा परमार्थता ॥
na nirodho na cotpattir na baddho na ca sādhakaḥ | na mumukṣur na vai mukta ity eṣā paramārthatā ||
No cessation, no arising, no one bound, no practitioner, no seeker of liberation, no liberated one: this is the ultimate truth.
Gauḍapāda's *paramārthatā* verse. The closest scriptural cousin of Aṣṭāvakra 16.10: the one identified with mokṣa is still in the realm of the unreal. The truly free are without any of these categories.
The mind absorbed in the world is bondage; the mind freed of the world is liberation.
मन एव मनुष्याणां कारणं बन्धमोक्षयोः । बन्धाय विषयासङ्गि मुक्त्यै निर्विषयं स्मृतम् ॥
mana eva manuṣyāṇāṃ kāraṇaṃ bandha-mokṣayoḥ | bandhāya viṣayāsaṅgi muktyai nirviṣayaṃ smṛtam |
The mind alone is the cause of bondage and liberation. Attached to objects, it binds. Detached from objects, it is said to liberate.
The classical Upaniṣadic axis that Aṣṭāvakra 16.7-8 turns into a description of the human types. The mind in *pravṛtti* takes attachment. The mind in *nirvṛtti* takes aversion. *Svāsthya* sits past both.