Astăvakra said

My dearest, you may recite or listen to countless scriptures,
but you will not be established
within until you can forget everything. 16.1

You may, as a learned man, indulge in wealth,
activity and meditation,
yet your Self will long for that
which is beyond all goals. 16.2

Everyone is in pain because of their own effort, (*)
but no one realizes it.
By just this very instruction,
the lucky one attains tranquility. 16.3

Note: effort to obtain their desires.

Happiness belongs to no one but
that supremely lazy person for whom
even opening and closing one's eyes is a bother. 16.4

When the mind is freed from such pairs of opposites as
`I have done this,' and `I have not done that,'
it becomes indifferent to religious merit, wealth,
sensual enjoyment and liberation. 16.5

One person abhors them, and become averse to the senses,
another covets, is greedy and attached to them,
But if you desire nothing,
And disdain nothing,
Neither attachment nor detachment bind you. 16.6

So long as desire,
which is the state of lacking discrimination, remains,
so will the branch and sprout of the world.
the sense of the acceptable and the rejectable. 16.7

Desire springs from use of the senses,
and aversion from abstention,
but the wise person is free from
the pairs of opposites like a child,
and thus established. 16.8

The passionate person wants to renounce to
the world so as to avoid pain, but the dispassionate
person is without pain and feels no distress even in it. 16.9

One who is proud about even liberation
or considers the body as his/her own body,
is neither a seer or a mystic.
Such a person is still just a sufferer. 16.10

If even Shiva, Vishnu or the lotus-born Brahma
were your instructor, not until you have forgotten
everything you cannot be established within. 16.11



XVI   Forget Everything.
Home  ||  Introduction  ||  Contents  ||  I  ||  II  ||  III  ||  IV  ||  V  || 
VI  ||  VII  ||  VIII  ||  IX  ||  X  ||  XI  ||  XII  ||   XIII  ||  XIV  ||  XV  || 
XVI  ||  XVII  ||  XVIII a  ||  XVIII b  ||  XVIII c  ||  XVIII d  ||  XIX  || 
                                                XX  || 
Credits and Links