बन्धमोक्षविवेकः
Chapter 8
Bandha-Mokṣa-vivekaḥ · 4 verses
Janaka has spoken. Aṣṭāvakra now returns the lamp to its lampstand. Four verses, the shortest chapter so far, and the most pithy definition of bondage and liberation in any Indian text. Bondage is when the mind reaches for anything, anything at all, by craving or grieving, by grasping or letting go, by delighting or being angry. Liberation is when the mind reaches for nothing. The same mind, the same situations; only its clutch is different. Then the third verse generalizes: bondage is the mind sticking to any *dṛṣṭi*, any view; liberation is the mind sticking to none. The fourth verse closes with the final inversion. When there is no "I," there is freedom. When there is "I," there is bondage. Knowing this, do not grasp and do not let go, but with playful ease, *helayā*, leave both alone. The whole architecture of spiritual struggle is dismantled. The teacher gives the student the master key, and the key is so simple it can hide in plain sight for a lifetime.
Aṣṭāvakra speaks
तदा बन्धो यदा चित्तं किन्चिद् वांछति शोचति। किंचिन् मुंचति गृण्हाति किंचिद् दृष्यति कुप्यति
tadā bandho yadā cittaṃ kincid vāṃchati śocati kiṃcin muṃcati gṛṇhāti kiṃcid dṛṣyati kupyati
Bondage is when the mind wants something, grieves over something, releases something, grasps something, delights in something, becomes angry over something.
तदा मुक्तिर्यदा चित्तं न वांछति न शोचति। न मुंचति न गृण्हाति न हृष्यति न कुप्यति
tadā muktiryadā cittaṃ na vāṃchati na śocati na muṃcati na gṛṇhāti na hṛṣyati na kupyati
Liberation is when the mind does not want, does not grieve, does not release, does not grasp, does not delight, does not become angry.
तदा बन्धो यदा चित्तं सक्तं काश्वपि दृष्टिषु। तदा मोक्षो यदा चित्तमसक्तं सर्वदृष्टिषु
tadā bandho yadā cittaṃ saktaṃ kāśvapi dṛṣṭiṣu tadā mokṣo yadā cittamasaktaṃ sarvadṛṣṭiṣu
Bondage is when the mind is stuck to any view at all. Liberation is when the mind is unattached to every view.
यदा नाहं तदा मोक्षो यदाहं बन्धनं तदा। मत्वेति हेलया किंचिन्मा गृहाण विमुंच मा
yadā nāhaṃ tadā mokṣo yadāhaṃ bandhanaṃ tadā matveti helayā kiṃcinmā gṛhāṇa vimuṃca mā
When there is no I, there is liberation. When there is I, there is bondage. Knowing this, lightly, do not grasp anything and do not let go of anything.
Aṣṭāvakra works by parallels. He sets two sentences side by side and lets the contrast do the teaching. Read 8.1 and 8.2 together.
In 8.1, tadā bandho yadā cittaṃ. Bondage is then, when the citta, the mind, does what follows. Kiñcid vāñchati śocati. Wants something. Grieves over something. Kiñcin muñcati gṛhṇāti. Releases something. Grasps something. Kiñcid hṛṣyati kupyati. Delights in something. Becomes angry over something. The structure is six verbs, in three pairs of opposites: wanting and grieving, releasing and grasping, delighting and getting angry. Notice what Aṣṭāvakra is doing. Even the spiritual move of muñcati, letting go, is named as bondage. Letting go is a movement of the citta toward something, and that movement is itself the cage.
Then 8.2 keeps the same syntax, every verb negated. Na vāñchati na śocati. Na muñcati na gṛhṇāti. Na hṛṣyati na kupyati. Mukti is the mind that does none of these things. The verses are designed to be heard one after the other. The bondage list is exactly the liberation list, with na, not, inserted before each verb.
This is brutally clean. The cage and the freedom share the same cell. Only the bars have been removed by the addition of one syllable.
Verse 8.3 generalizes the principle. Tadā bandho yadā cittaṃ saktaṃ kāsvapi dṛṣṭiṣu. Bondage is when the citta is sakta, attached, stuck, to kāsvapi dṛṣṭiṣu, any views whatsoever. Tadā mokṣo yadā cittam asaktaṃ sarva-dṛṣṭiṣu. Liberation is when the citta is unattached to all views. The crucial Sanskrit word here is dṛṣṭi. Not just opinion. A dṛṣṭi is a way of seeing, a position the mind takes up. Including spiritual positions. Including "I am a seeker." Including "I am free." The unattachment is to all dṛṣṭi. Even the right ones.
Verse 8.4 delivers the master verse. Yadā nāhaṃ tadā mokṣo. When there is no I, there is liberation. Yadā ahaṃ bandhanaṃ tadā. When there is I, there is bondage. Ahaṃ is the ego-pronoun, the ahaṃkāra in seed form. Then the closing instruction: matveti helayā kiñcin mā gṛhāṇa vimuñca mā. Having understood this, with helayā, playfulness, casual ease, do not grasp anything and do not let go of anything either. Helā is a beautiful word; it is the lightness of a dancer's gesture, the ease of someone not trying. The verse ends with mā gṛhāṇa vimuñca mā: do not grasp, do not let go. Both directions of effort are dropped. There is no path here. There is only the recognition that grasping and renouncing are two sides of the same coin, and the coin itself is what binds.
If you read only one chapter of the Aṣṭāvakra Gītā in your lifetime, this is the one to read. Four verses. Half a page. And every spiritual path you have ever heard of is gently put back in its box.
Most teachings on liberation describe a long road. You begin in bondage. You undertake practices. You purify the mind. You renounce the world. You meditate. You read scripture. You serve the guru. Slowly, over many lifetimes if necessary, the bondage thins. One day, perhaps, liberation dawns. That is the standard map. It runs through almost every major tradition in some form.
Aṣṭāvakra is not against that map. He is just standing at a different altitude. From where he sits, the entire road is the thing the map was supposed to dissolve.
Look again at the six verbs in 8.1. Wants. Grieves. Releases. Grasps. Delights. Becomes angry. Wanting and grieving belong to the ordinary, worldly person. Of course. But what about releasing? Releasing is what the renunciate does. The monk who walks away from his property is releasing. The seeker who lets go of his attachments is releasing. The meditator who drops the thought is releasing. And Aṣṭāvakra names releasing, muñcati, as a form of bondage.
This is the verse most readers miss. Because we have built our entire spiritual identity around letting go. Letting go is the move that distinguishes the spiritual person from the worldly person. The worldly person grasps. The spiritual person lets go. We are proud of our letting go. We measure our progress by it.
Aṣṭāvakra says: letting go is also a movement of the mind toward an object. It is still the citta doing something with a thing. The thing being released has not gone. It has only been placed at arm's length. The mind that releases is still entangled with the released. Look honestly at a moment of "letting go" and you will find it: the residue, the satisfaction, the slight pride, the inner sense of "I gave that up." That residue is bondage.
This is why 8.2 inverts the verbs. Real freedom is not the mind doing the opposite. It is the mind ceasing to do. Not wanting. Not grieving. Not releasing. Not grasping. Not delighting. Not getting angry. Not because these are forbidden. Because the citta, free, simply does not move in those directions. The mind is at rest. Things arise; they are seen; nothing in the mind reaches.
Then 8.3 generalizes. The mind that is attached to any dṛṣṭi is bound. The mind unattached to all dṛṣṭi is free. Including the dṛṣṭi of being free. This is what people sometimes call the "final knot": the seeker's attachment to her seeking, to her insight, to her advanced position. Aṣṭāvakra dismantles it in passing.
A dṛṣṭi is anything the mind reifies into a position. "I believe in non-duality" is a dṛṣṭi. "My teacher is the best" is a dṛṣṭi. "The world is unreal" is a dṛṣṭi. "I have realized" is a dṛṣṭi. The citta clamps down on these positions because clamping feels like solidity. And solidity, of any kind, is bondage. The free mind is not the mind with the correct positions. It is the mind with no positions to defend.
8.4 gives the final word, and it is the most useful sentence in the whole text. Yadā nāhaṃ tadā mokṣo. Yadā ahaṃ bandhanaṃ tadā.
When there is no "I," there is liberation. When there is "I," there is bondage.
The "I" Aṣṭāvakra is naming is not the body or the personality or the name your parents gave you. It is ahaṃkāra, the thought-form that says "I am the one doing this, choosing this, suffering this, achieving this." That thought-form is the manufacturer of every chain. Where it is absent, even momentarily, freedom is present. Where it is operating, even with the best spiritual intentions, bondage is present.
And then the closing line, which is the whole instruction. Matveti helayā kiñcin mā gṛhāṇa vimuñca mā. Having understood this, with playful ease, do not grasp anything and do not let go of anything either.
This is the gentlest spiritual instruction ever given. Helayā: playfully, lightly, with the ease of someone who is not even trying. Do not grasp. Do not let go. Just be. The world arrives; the world leaves; you have no use for either gesture, the gesture of pulling toward or the gesture of pushing away. Both are activities of the bound mind. The free mind does not act on the world. It receives the world and remains itself.
If you have been a seeker for many years and you are tired of all the techniques, hear this verse. The exhaustion you feel is the citta still trying to do something. Let it not try. Let the mind sit. Things will arise. Things will leave. Your business is neither to encourage them nor to send them away. Your business is to be, and being requires no effort at all. Helayā.
Ramana Maharshi was once asked by a devotee, with some anguish, how he could possibly give up his attachments. He had tried for years. The attachments would not leave. Ramana looked at him for a moment and said: I am not asking you to give them up. I am asking you to find out who has them.
This is Aṣṭāvakra 8.4. When the "I" is investigated, the attachments are not renounced, they are simply unattended to. Yadā nāhaṃ tadā mokṣo. When there is no "I," there is liberation. Ramana's vicāra, his enquiry, is not a practice of giving up. It is the practice of looking at the one who would give up and finding no one there. When no one is there, what was there to give up?
Visitors to Ramana's ashram in Tiruvannamalai often noticed something that puzzled them. Ramana did not seem to do anything spiritual. He read newspapers. He cooked when he was younger, sliced vegetables for the kitchen. He laughed at jokes. He answered letters. He did not appear to be meditating in the formal sense. And yet everyone who entered the room felt themselves arrested, quieted, exposed. He was helayā. The instruction of 8.4 made flesh. Not grasping anything. Not letting go of anything. Just there. The presence was the teaching.
Nisargadatta Maharaj in Bombay would put it more roughly. When a seeker complained that he could not stop wanting, could not stop grasping, could not stop reacting, Nisargadatta would ask: who is the one wanting? Who is the one reacting? Look for him. Find him. And the seeker would look, and after some time would report that he could not find a stable "I" anywhere; only thoughts, only sensations, only the witnessing. And Nisargadatta would smile and say: then who is in bondage?
This is the radical move Aṣṭāvakra 8.4 makes. The chain is not the attachment. The chain is the believer in attachment, the "I" who says "I am bound." Take the "I" out, the attachments may still come and go, but no one is bound by them.
Sadāśiva Brahmendra, the eighteenth-century avadhūta of Nerur in Tamil Nadu, lived this chapter in literal form. He wandered naked through villages, often unaware of where he was. He did not grasp anything; he did not let go of anything; he had nothing to grasp or let go of. His samādhi was so deep that, the stories say, his hand was once cut off by a soldier who thought him an intruder, and Sadāśiva walked on without noticing. When the soldier later realized what had happened and fell at his feet, Sadāśiva is said to have replaced the hand with the casual ease of helayā. Whether the miracle is historical or hagiographical, the point of the story is the point of Aṣṭāvakra 8.4. The body had become an event that arose and departed in his awareness; no "I" was attached to it. The hand could be cut. The hand could be returned. None of it required the citta to grasp or release.
The Heart Sutra, in the Mahāyāna grammar of emptiness, arrives at the same recognition by a different road. Na prāptir nāprāptiḥ: no attainment, no non-attainment. The Bodhisattva, the sutra says, lives without obstruction in mind, and because there is no obstruction, no fear. This is the same helayā. The mind that is not attached to any dṛṣṭi, including the dṛṣṭi of attaining and the dṛṣṭi of not attaining, is the mind that is free. Aṣṭāvakra and Avalokiteśvara, speaking in different vocabularies, gesture at the same release.
The two grammars do not merge. Aṣṭāvakra has a Self, a cit, an ocean. The Heart Sutra has emptiness, śūnyatā, no Self. The destination, from inside, may feel the same. The map is not. Hold the difference; it keeps both traditions honest.
When there is no I, there is freedom. When there is I, there is bondage.
Scriptural References
When the mind discards every desire that has entered it and rests, content, in the Self alone, that one is called settled in wisdom.
प्रजहाति यदा कामान्सर्वान्पार्थ मनोगतान् । आत्मन्येवात्मना तुष्टः स्थितप्रज्ञस्तदोच्यते ॥
prajahāti yadā kāmān sarvān pārtha mano-gatān | ātmany evātmanā tuṣṭaḥ sthita-prajñas tadocyate ||
When one lets go of every desire that has entered the mind, and is content in the Self by the Self alone, that one is called settled in wisdom.
Krishna's *sthita-prajña* portrait is the closest Gita echo of Aṣṭāvakra Gītā 8.2: the mind that no longer wants or grieves, releases or grasps, is the free mind.
Know the one called the ever-renunciate, who neither dislikes nor desires anything. Free from the pairs of opposites, that one is easily freed from bondage.
ज्ञेयः स नित्यसंन्यासी यो न द्वेष्टि न काङ्क्षति । निर्द्वन्द्वो हि महाबाहो सुखं बन्धात्प्रमुच्यते ॥
jñeyaḥ sa nitya-sannyāsī yo na dveṣṭi na kāṅkṣati | nirdvandvo hi mahā-bāho sukhaṃ bandhāt pramucyate ||
Know him as the eternally renounced: the one who neither hates nor longs. Free from the pairs of opposites, mighty-armed one, he is easily released from bondage.
Krishna names the same hinge Aṣṭāvakra names: the mind without attraction and aversion is the mind that is free. *Nirdvandva*, free of the pairs, is exactly what 8.1 and 8.2 enact in their mirrored lists.
The seeker should leave behind every fixation on the unreal, which is the cause of bondage, and rest established in the Self alone.
यतिरसदनुसंधिं बन्धहेतुं विहाय । स्वयमायामहमस्मीत्यात्मदृष्ट्यैव तिष्ठेत् ॥
yatir asad-anusandhiṃ bandha-hetuṃ vihāya | svayam āyām aham asmīty ātma-dṛṣṭyaiva tiṣṭhet ||
The seeker should give up dwelling on the unreal, which is the cause of bondage, and rest in the conviction "I am That," established in the Self alone.
Śaṅkara names *anusandhi*, fixation, as the cause of bondage. Aṣṭāvakra Gītā 8.3 generalizes: *citta* attached to any *dṛṣṭi* is bound, *citta* attached to none is free.
When the I-form is dropped, what was called bondage falls away. The non-dual stands forth on its own.
ईश्वरानुग्रहादेव पुंसामद्वैतवासना ।
īśvarānugrahād eva puṃsām advaita-vāsanā |
Only by the grace of the Lord does the conviction of non-duality arise in a person.
Dattātreya opens the Avadhūta Gītā with the same conviction Aṣṭāvakra closes Chapter 8 with: when *ahaṃ*, the I-form, dissolves, what remains is *advaita*, and *advaita* is freedom itself. The bondage and the liberation are not two events. They are the absence and presence of the ego-thought.