Chapter-8, Verse 1

Ashtavakra Gita Verse 8.1

अष्टावक्र उवाच 

तदा बन्धो यदा चित्तं किञ्चिद्वाञ्छति शोचति। किञ्चिन्मुञ्चति गृह्णाति किञ्चिद्घृष्यति कुप्यति॥१॥

Aṣṭāvakra said: 

1. It is bondage when the mind desires or grieves at anything; does reject or accept anything; does feel happy or angry at anything. 

First of all Aṣṭāvakra defines the state of bondage, since this is the condition which is very familiar to we students in general. If they were not already in bondage, they would not study Aṣṭāvakra Gītā, but would keep on singing their own Gīta. Having brought the condition of bondage acutely to the awareness of a student, it should be relatively easy for that student to at least vaguely grasp what exactly is the state of freedom. 

Desire is an emotion that rises up to disturb the mind when it recognises an object outside itself and passionately hopes that the object of its fascination can give it a covetable satisfaction. When, having procured an object of desire, if it decays in the embrace of the mind, the sorrow suffered by the mind is called grief. 

Things that the mind feels are not for itself conducive, it rejects and things that are conducive, it accepts. 

Again, when the worldly objects assembled around a mind in a pattern that is in line with its present idea of joy, the mind feels happy; when the things get arranged in a pattern contrary to the mind's present ideas of happiness, the mind revolts against them; this is expressed as anger. To live thus a slave to the mind and its death dance is to live in ‘bondage’. 

Slavish obedience of the individual to the endless demands of the body, mind and intellect for sense gratifications, among the objects of the world outside, is the state of bondage.