VIII :
Ashtavakra said:
1. Bondage is when the mind longs for something, grieves about something, rejects something, holds on to something, is pleased about something or displeased aboutsomething.
2. Liberation is when the mind does not long for anything, grieve about anything, reject anything, or hold on to anything, and is not pleased about anything or displeased about anything.
3. Bondage is when the mind is tangled in one of the senses, and liberation is when the mind is not tangled in any of the senses.
4. When there is no me, that is liberation, and when there is me there is bondage. Considering this earnestly, I do not hold on and do not reject.
IX :
Ashtavakra said:
1. Knowing when the dualism of things done and undone has been put to rest, or the person for whom they occur has been cognized, then you can here and now go beyond renunciation and obligations by indifference to such things.
2. Rare indeed, my dearest, is the lucky person whose observation of the world?s behaviour has led to the extinction of the thirst for living, for pleasure and for knowledge.
3. All this is impermanent and spoilt by the three sorts of pain. Recognising it to be insubstantial, comtemptible and only fit for indifference, one attains peace.
4. When was that age or time of life when the dualism of extremes did not exist for people? Abandoning them, a person happy to take whatever comes suddenly realizes perfection.
5. Who does not end up with indifference to such things and attain peace when he has seen the differences of opinions among the great sages, saints and yogis?
6. Is he not a guru who, endowed with dispassion and equanimity, achieves full knowledge of the nature of consciousness, and so leads others out of samsara?
7. If you would just see the transformations of the elements as nothing more than the elements, then you would immediately be freed from all bonds and established in your own nature.
8. One’s inclinations are samsara. Knowing this, abandon them. The renunciation of them is the renunciation of it. Now you can remain as you are.
X :
Ashtavakra said:
1. Abandoning desire, the enemy, along with gain, itself so full of loss, and the good deeds which are the cause of the other two – I practice indifference to everything.
2. I look on such things as friends, land, money, property, wife, and bequests as nothing but a a dream or a three or five-day conjuror?s show.
3. Wherever a desire occurs, I see samsara in it. Establishing myself in firm dispassion, I be free of passion and happy.
4. The essential nature of bondage is nothing other than desire, and its elimination is known as liberation. It is simply by not being attached to changing things that the everlasting joy of attainment is reached.
5. You are one, conscious and pure, while all this is just inert non-being. Ignorance itself is nothing, so what need have you of desire to understand?
6. Kingdoms, children, wives, bodies, pleasures – these have all been lost to you life after life, attached to them though you were.
7. Enough of wealth, sensuality and good deeds. In the forest of samsara the mind has never found satisfaction in these.
8. How many births have you not done hard and painful labour with body, mind and speech. Now at last stop!