** Ashtavakra said:**
** 16.1 You can recite and discuss scripture all you want, but until you drop everything you will never know Truth. **
SPECIAL INSTRUCTION
You must begin by studying scripture.
16.2 You can enjoy and work and meditate, but you will still yearn for That which is beyond all experience, and in which all desires are extinguished
**16.3 Everyone is miserable because they exert constant effort. But no one understands this. A ripe mind can become unshackled upon hearing this one instruction. **
Exert: With the idea of getting something or to get rid of something, there will be duality and he will be unhappy. The word “exert” cannot be used in the case of the Jnani because he sees no duality, though he works.
**16.4 The master idler, to whom even blinking is a bother, is happy. But he is the only one. **
Closing and opening: Things must go naturally without “your” sense of exertion. Everything is yourself, a part of yourself, goes on naturally without your special attention, as you do not pay any attention to the winking of [your] eye. If you can get this attitude, you will be happy. Complete identification with the whole universe. Nothing is foreign to him. So nothing pains him. Everything is natural and smooth.
**16.5 When the mind is free of opposites like “This is done,” and “This is yet undone,” one becomes indifferent to merit, wealth, pleasure and liberation. **
You become indifferent to the whole thing because the whole thing is Brahman. The thought of liberty [liberation]is only a thought.
16.6 One who abhors sense objects avoids them. One who desires them becomes ensnared. One who neither abhors nor desires is neither detached nor attached.
Abhors sense-objects, avoids: Because still there is idea of duality. Mix a little “Brahman” with everything you eat.
[S] Raga desha (attachment/avoidance) both imply duality.
**16.7 As long as there is desire– which is the absence of discrimination– there will be attachment and non-attachment. This is the cause of the world. **
16.8 Indulgence creates attachment. Aversion creates abstinence. Like a child, the sage is free of both and thus lives on as a child.
If you like anything, it is Brahman. If you don’t like it, it is Brahman. As in a dream.
Child: The child has no premeditated effort. You do not think that there is something different from Brahman to be done.
The key is – “He sees everything as Brahman”.
** 16.9 One who is attached to the world thinks renouncing it will relieve his misery. One who is attached to nothing is free and does not feel miserable even in the world. **
One who is attached to the world: Who thinks that this world is real. Even
there: In the world. The Jnani will never run away from the world.
**16.10 He who claims liberation as his own, as an attainment of a person, is neither enlightened nor a seeker. He suffers his own misery. **
It is only the Jnani who can see even the body is Brahman.
[B] Whoever has pride or attachment to [the] body, is not a knower of truth; their practice of yoga is fruitless, mere toil, they get only sorrow.
16.11 Though Hara, Hari or the lotus-born Brahma himself instruct you, until you know nothing you will never know Self.