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Aṣṭāvakra Gītā (The Song of Aṣṭāvakra)

Ashtavakra

A Sanskrit poem of some three hundred verses in twenty chapters, cast as a dialogue between King Janaka of Mithilā and Aṣṭāvakra. After the king's opening questions on knowledge, liberation and dispassion, the teacher asserts that the self is the conscious witness, formless and actionless, and that bondage is merely a mistaken identification with body and mind. Janaka answers with songs of wonder at his own nature, and the text culminates in a long chapter (XVIII) on the one liberated while living. It dispenses with rites, duties and stages of life, and even regards the practice of concentration itself as bondage.