Chapter-8: Bondage and Freedom
Introduction
Still hearing too much “I” in Janaka’s language, Ashtavakra
instructs him in the subtleties of attachment and bondage. What has been so beautifully described by Janaka in the previous chapter be the true knowledge of the tranquil Self, why is it that this blissful experience is denied to the majority of the suffering humanity? Aṣṭāvakra takes up this for discussion and explains in this chapter how the ‘bondage’, and why the ‘freedom’.
The extroverted-ness of the mind and, therefore, the outgoing tendencies of the ego, characterise the state of bondage. The mind and the ego sense turning towards the Self, the state of mind's dissolution and ego’s rediscovery of its permanent identity with Self, constitute the state of ‘freedom’.
When the mind rushes out recognising a world of objects, it runs wild among them rejecting things that are not conducive and pursuing things that are imagined to be conducive to its happiness. Desiring and hating, accepting and rejecting, hunting after some things and being hunted after by other things, constructing and destroying, loving and fighting, from womb to the tomb, the ego strives and struggles, pants and suffers; this is bondage.
Mahopaniṣad defines the ‘bondage’ with one word, namely, ‘mameti’ – ‘mineness’, and with another single word ‘nirmameti’, namely, ‘not-mineness’ – the ‘freedom’. (dve pade bandhamokṣāya nirmameti mameti ca, mameti badhyate janturnirmameti vimucyate. ~ Mahopaniṣad-4.72)
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