Further Instruction — Resting in the SelfFurther Instruction — Resting in the Self

Ashtavakra is not declaring study worthless. He is questioning what happens when an accumulation of teachings becomes another identity to protect. A person may recite accurate passages, compare schools and keep seeking one more authoritative answer, while remaining troubled by the urge to secure a final self-image. Sarva-vismaraṇa is therefore better approached here as releasing possessive identification with conceptual contents, not as literal amnesia or a demand to erase useful learning. Scripture can serve as a signpost; repeating the signpost is not the same as being at home. The word svāsthya derives its force from abiding in the Self rather than a medical definition of health. This philosophical instruction should not discourage literacy, discernment, or care for ordinary responsibilities.

The verse deliberately places enjoyment, action and samādhi on the same line. Their outward forms differ, yet each can become an instrument by which the seeker hopes to complete an imagined deficiency. Even meditation may be undertaken with tense expectation: one more state to achieve, one more proof of progress to collect. Nirasta-sarvāśa points to the subsiding of possessive longing, not the abolition of practical planning or every ordinary wish. The question is not whether one is socially active or inwardly withdrawn, but whether experience is being used to manufacture an identity that is finally enough. Because the verb and the compound describing the mind are syntactically compressed, the final English nuance should be checked by a Sanskrit editor against the historical print.

The word āyāsa can refer to exertion, but the teaching becomes especially pointed when exertion hardens into an incessant demand to make oneself complete. Ordinary effort is necessary for work, learning, family care and addressing injustice. What Ashtavakra questions is the inner compulsion that treats every outcome as a verdict on one’s essential worth. In that mode, even a modest task can feel like a battle for identity. His sweeping phrase about everyone suffering and no one knowing should be read as a rhetorical spiritual diagnosis, not a clinical or statistical statement about all people. The “fortunate” person recognizes the mechanism of clinging and permits it to loosen. Nirvṛti then names repose that does not have to wait for every circumstance to become perfect.

This is deliberate hyperbole. The image of the eyelids presents a person for whom even the smallest act no longer supplies the sense of an essential “doer” that must keep proving itself. The startling expression ālasya-dhurīṇa literally elevates idleness, but it need not be treated as a behavioral command to stop working, ignore someone in need, or neglect health. Nor is mere passivity evidence of realization. The paradox distinguishes simple being from compulsive self-manufacture: peace is not won by becoming impressive at stillness. In context, Ashtavakra challenges the effortful spiritual ego, not responsible living. A reviewer should nevertheless preserve the severity of his wording rather than smoothing it into an innocuous slogan about taking a rest.

The familiar four puruṣārthas—ethical order, material well-being, human enjoyment and release—form a broad map of life. Here Ashtavakra asks what happens when that map is turned into a perpetual verdict on the self. Planning, accounting and correcting unfinished obligations remain useful; the suffering begins when every completed or incomplete task becomes proof that one is fundamentally worthy or inadequate. Nirapekṣa signifies a lack of existential dependence, not indifference to ethics, livelihood, relationships or care. The verse also includes liberation among the goals that can become objects of clinging, so spiritual progress is not exempt from this critique. A person may continue to act responsibly while being less possessed by the tally of achievements.

The tree image depicts a process rather than a single forbidden action: longing leads to selection, selection to identification, and identification to further longing. Practical discernment certainly requires choosing and refusing—one must obtain food, resist harm and set boundaries. The verse instead challenges the more basic spṛhā that makes every preference a bid to rescue an incomplete self. That craving may perpetuate an unreflective cycle of reaction. The closing compound nirvicāra-daśāspadam is syntactically dense and capable of contested interpretation; this provisional explanation hears it as providing a foothold for an unexamined condition. It should not be presented as a settled philological gloss until the grammar and other witnesses have been checked. The spiritual point is release from compulsion, not suspension of judgment.

The mind can turn both activity and retreat into identities. At work it clings to productivity; away from work it may resent every interruption. Ashtavakra questions the need to define oneself through either posture. The simile bālavat, “like a child,” suggests freshness without elaborate inner calculation, not immaturity or disregard for consequences. In fact the verse attributes wisdom to precisely this person. Necessary action and necessary rest can still occur, while their alternation no longer dictates one’s sense of completeness. The word nirvṛtti in this context is provisionally read as cessation or withdrawal from activity; its relation to aversion should receive grammatical confirmation. The teaching does not promise freedom from every feeling, but describes release from being organized around opposing compulsions.

Sometimes the wish to escape becomes another demand upon experience: “If only everything around me disappeared, I would finally be whole.” The verse points out that rejecting the field of experience does not by itself undo the one who clings. This insight should never be used to discourage someone from leaving an unsafe situation, obtaining treatment, or resisting abuse. Vītarāga designates a loosening of possessive identification, not a guaranteed lack of bodily pain or psychological difficulty. The apparent fearlessness is articulated within Advaita’s account of the Self; it is not evidence that all suffering can be dismissed. Ashtavakra presses for an inward change deeper than a change of scenery, while leaving sensible practical decisions fully relevant at their own level.

“I have attained freedom” can become the most subtle possession of the spiritual ego. Ashtavakra’s critique does not require neglecting the body or abandoning healthy self-respect. It concerns the conviction that one’s bodily identity or claimed enlightenment must be guarded as the final measure of who one is. Pride in being liberated is particularly paradoxical because the very achievement is being converted into something for the self-image to own. Calling such a person “neither a knower nor a yogin” is confrontational pedagogical language, not a permission to pronounce verdicts on another person’s worth or inner state. The verse works best as a private test of spiritual vanity: is inquiry freeing one from defensiveness, or furnishing a new distinction to defend? Care for bodily well-being remains entirely compatible with the teaching.

The closing verse returns to the refrain of 16.1, now with the greatest imaginable teachers as its example. Divine instruction can point, clarify and challenge, but the hearer cannot replace direct understanding with prestige, memorized doctrine, or borrowed certainty. The three divine names are not objects of disparagement; their rhetorical role heightens the difference between receiving teaching and ceasing to cling to the teaching as an external guarantee. As earlier, sarva-vismaraṇa need not mean literal loss of memory, abandonment of social ties, or disregard for education. It suggests the letting go of the mind’s need for a final object to possess. The 1911 print visibly reads svāsthyaṃ (स्वास्थ्यं); an independent digital transcript omits the second sibilant as svāthyaṃ (स्वाथ्यं), a discrepancy to resolve formally at collation rather than copying uncritically.