Chapter-3, Verse 12

Ashtavakra Gita Verse 3.12

निःस्पृहं मानसं यस्य नैराश्येऽपि महात्मनः। तस्यात्मज्ञानतृप्तस्य तुलना केन जायते॥१२॥

12. With whom can we compare that great Sage, whose mind is free from desires; who, even in his frustration experiences contentment in his Self-knowledge? 

Human mind works under a uniform pattern of behaviours everywhere. It perceives an object and discovers for itself a great sense of fulfilment in possessing that object and in enjoying it. Thus a desire is born. This desire goads him on to struggle hard to gain the object of the desire. When the desire is not fulfilled, the sorrows of disappointment rise in the mind; sometimes the desire is fulfilled, but the object possessed after a very great struggle, may not provide the expected happiness and, therefore, the mind suffers a sense of disillusionment. 

The emotions of disappointment and disillusionment together constitute the ‘sense of frustration’. Repeated waves of frustrating experiences together build up the sad and sorrowful worldly life (saṁsāra). This is the dissection of an average individualised mind. 

The Man of Realisation, whose mind is calm and serene even in the midst of great disappointment in life, is a unique phenomenon and, therefore, Aṣṭāvakra exclaims, ‘With whom can we compare a great souled one!’ Such exclamations we find sprinkled all over in the textbooks that expound the goal and the way of realisation as described in Vedānta. In Yogavāsiṣṭha we read, ‘The great Sage who has snapped asunder all the bonds of his heart, cannot be compared even with hundreds of lakhs of trinities.’ The term ‘nairāśye’ translated here as ‘frustration’ is employed, though rarely, in our scriptures in the sense of the ‘state of desirelessness’ and so it implies ‘Realization’. In this sense, the stanza would mean ‘He whose mind has lost even its desire for Realization’.