Ashtavakra said:
** 10.1 Give up desire, which is the enemy. Give up prosperity, which is born of mischief and good works. Be indifferent.**
PEACE (REST)
** 10.2 Look upon friends, lands, wealth, houses, wives, gifts– and all apparent good fortune– as a passing show, as a dream lasting three to five days. **
10.3 Where there is desire, there is the world. Be firm in non-attachment. Be free of desire. Be happy.
** 10.4 Bondage and desire are the same. Destroy desire and be free. Only by detaching from the world does one joyfully realize Self.**
Desire: Implies ego and duality.
**10.5 You are One— Awareness itself. The universe is neither aware nor does it exist. Even ignorance is unreal. What is left to know? **
You are One: [text changed to] You (as the subject) are Alone.
The universe is an existent, but it is not real. It continually passes away. Non-Existent: Unreal. There is nothing different for you to know. But this will come after you have analyzed and known the world.
10.6 Attached as you have been to kingdoms, sons, wives, bodies, pleasures— life after life— still they are now lost forever.
Cf Vairagya Shatakam Verse 12: [The objects of enjoyment, even after staying with us for a long time, are sure to leave us sometime; then what difference does their privation in this way make to men, that they do not of their own accord discard them?
If the enjoyments leave us on their own initiative, i.e. if they tear themselves from us, they produce great affliction of the mind; but if men voluntarily renounce them, they lead to the eternal bliss of self-possession. See the above paragraph explains.
**10.7 Prosperity, pleasure, pious deeds… Enough! In the dreary forest of the world the mind finds no rest. **
Pessimism is as important as optimism. Optimism is only one aspect of life. The Jnani must take all aspects.
10.8 For how many lifetimes have you done hard and painful labor with body, mind and speech? It is time to stop.