11.1
Ashtavakra said:
It is to nature that belongs
whatever happens, does not happen,
gets created or destroyed,
or altered in a changing world.
All this occurs quite naturally.
It happens of its own accord.
When that is surely understood,
whoever realizes it
finds comfort, leading back to peace
which no affliction can disturb.
11.2
For someone who’s completely sure
that everything here in the world
is a creation of the Lord
and that there is no alien thing,
all hope or wish for outside things
becomes dissolved in peace within.
Then, how can there be anything
to which that someone is attached?
11.3
For someone who’s completely sure
that fortunes and misfortunes come
in course of time from fate alone,
all faculties remain controlled
spontaneously: from self within.
That someone always rests content,
where neither want nor grief is
found.
11.4
For someone who’s completely sure
that joy and pain, like birth and
death,
arise in time from fate alone,
it is not hopefully perceived
that everything which we expect
can somehow always be achieved.
That someone is thus liberated
from involvement with exertion.
Such a one is always free:
never found to be attached,
not even in the midst of doing
body’s actions in the world.
11.5
All suffering here in this world
is just a fearful fantasy,
born only from mind’s worrying.
Whoever is convinced of this
gets thereby freed and rests content
–
with all desires given up –
no matter where, no matter when.
11.6
‘No, I am not this body here.
And no, this body is not mine.’
Whoever is convinced of this
does not fall back on what’s been
done,
nor frets at what’s been left undone.
Beyond all doing or non-doing,
freedom is found absolute.
11.7
‘Just I alone am all of this:
right from the all-creating Lord
down to the smallest tuft of grass.’
Whoever knows that truth for sure
is freed from all conditioned
thought.
That someone is thus pure, at peace –
remaining always turned away
from what may sometimes be attained
or may sometimes be unattained.
11.8
For someone who’s completely sure
that this amazing, complex world
is not at all what it appears,
that certainty brings freedom
from all personal conditioning
of wish and want for partial things.
Thus freed from personality,
one comes at last to shining peace
whose very nature lights itself,
as if there’s nothing in the world
that may exist or not exist.