as the sky
Where this scripture stands (brief and exact)
Ashtavakra Gītā is a short Sanskrit dialogue in the Advaita (non-dual) stream. The speaker is the sage Aṣṭāvakra (his body bent in eight places), and the listener is King Janaka of Videha, a ruler known in Upaniṣadic lore for clarity in the midst of life. The text is radical: it does not train you—it unmasks you.
We’ll walk it in five arcs:
- Part I — The Witness (Chs. 1–4)
- Part II — Gravity Lost (Chs. 5–8)
- Part III — Quiet Fire (Chs. 9–12)
- Part IV — The Vanishing Doer (Chs. 13–16)
- Part V — Freedom Always (Chs. 17–20)
Today is Part I.
1) The real opening question
Dialogue
Janaka: “How do I find freedom?”
Aṣṭāvakra: “By knowing what you already are.”
Not “become,” but “know.” The text refuses the future. It insists on the present fact. Freedom isn’t a prize later; it is the nature of what is reading this line.
Deepen: now / not later / already
2) The straightest statement in the book
Aṣṭāvakra’s core cut:
You are not body, not breath, not mind.
You are the seeing in which all three appear.
“Witness” here isn’t a role you play. It is the bare condition for any role to show up. A sensation moves, a thought moves, even the inner claim “this is me” moves. What notices all moving never moves. That is what the sage calls Self.
Dialogue
Janaka: “Is witness a thing?”
Aṣṭāvakra: “A thing can be seen. Witness is the seeing.”
Deepen: unmoving / seeing / groundless
3) What “I” means here—word by word
“I” — not the character with a name, but that to which the name appears.
“am” — not “will be.” The tense matters.
“awareness” — not a mood, not concentration; the lit field in which moods and focus rise and set.
When the text says “I am awareness,” it is not inflating the person. It is subtracting everything that can be pointed at, until only the pointing-light remains.
Deepen: I / am / awareness
4) Poison is not the world
The book calls clinging “poison,” and truthfulness, gentleness, contentment “nectar.” It never blames form. Forms are innocent—sound, taste, sight. The sting is the glue of I must have / I must be / I cannot lose. Glue hurts; form doesn’t.
Dialogue
Janaka: “Should I leave the world?”
Aṣṭāvakra: “Leave confusion. The world is not the problem.”
Deepen: form innocent / glue hurts / loosen
5) Neti, neti — not this, not that (without bitterness)
“Not this” isn’t a rejection; it’s exact seeing.
Body: felt, changing. Not I.
Senses: bright, dim, bright. Not I.
Mind: a page where words keep rewriting themselves. Not I.
Even “I-feeling”: a warm center that comes and goes. Not I.
What remains when everything changeable is set aside isn’t a blank. It’s clear presence, like space—allowing everything, owned by nothing.
Deepen: peel / remain / space
6) Doer vs. doing
Bondage is a grammar mistake: “I am the doer.” Doing happens; that sentence authors a phantom owner. The text points to action without the heavy center. Wind passes through reeds; music comes; no reed says “I did it.” Janaka will still rule. But rulership happens like breathing—without a little emperor behind it.
Dialogue
Janaka: “If there is no doer, why act?”
Aṣṭāvakra: “Show me the one who decided not to breathe.”
Deepen: happening / weightless / wind
7) Gold is gold
The text uses a picture: gold remains gold whether melted, beaten, ornamented. Pleasure, pain, praise, blame—these are shapes. The metal doesn’t change. Witness is like that. This is not coldness. It is intimacy without ownership. You feel everything; nothing sticks.
Deepen: same metal / all shapes / unstuck
8) Silence that allows sound
“Silence” here is not muting the world. It is that which lets any noise be heard. A silent room can be loud with birds and rain; silence is fine. In the same way, awareness is not harmed by anger, fear, delight. They rise, burn, cool, and are known. The knowing is untouched.
Dialogue
Janaka: “Then should mind be empty?”
Aṣṭāvakra: “Mind can storm. Sky stays sky.”
Deepen: allow / not resist / sky
9) A precise parable (and why it matters)
A king dreams he is a peasant. In the dream he cries. He wakes. The bed was always there. Waking did not fix the dream; it ended belief in it as final. When Janaka says “the ocean of the world is dry,” he doesn’t mean no waves. He means: their claim to be ultimate has been exposed.
Deepen: wake / bed / gentle dawn
10) Why the sage is crooked
Aṣṭāvakra’s bent body is the teaching: correctness is not in the frame but in the seeing. Pain can visit; the seer of pain is not in pain. This rescues the heart from a subtle trap: “When life is arranged, I will rest.” The book reverses it: rest first—see first—and let life arrange or disarrange.
Deepen: form bends / truth straight / prior rest
11) The shift in Janaka’s voice
By the end of this first arc, Janaka stops speaking as a seeker and speaks as the seeing. He doesn’t resign his crown; he resigns his claim to be the little owner of breath, thought, deed. The mood is not triumph—it is relief. Oil on water. Friction goes.
Deepen: reporting / relief / oil-on-water
12) Short, bare takeaways (not advice, just truth-claims)
The only part of experience that never appears as an object is awareness.
Everything seen, felt, or thought changes. The seer does not.
Bondage is the thought “I am this body-mind; I act, I enjoy, I suffer as owner.”
When that thought is seen through, nothing needs to be added or removed. Freedom is recognition, not achievement.
Deepen: unchanging / seen / ownerless
13) Closing exchange
Dialogue
Janaka: “If freedom is already so, why does bondage feel so true?”
Aṣṭāvakra: “Because a thought is believed. The knot isn’t on your feet; it’s in the idea.”
Janaka: “How does the knot come off?”
Aṣṭāvakra: “By being seen. Not by pulling. Like fog in sunlight.”
Deepen: knot / seeing / sunlight
What Part II will open
We’ll watch how this recognition drains the heaviness from desire and fear, and how effort loses its grind without killing excellence.
For now, hold one clean line:
“I am the clear space in which all comes and goes.”
Deepen: clear / space / comes-and-goes
Have a question or feedback?
I’d love to hear from you.