Ashtavakra said:
16.1
You can recite and discuss scripture all you want,
but until you drop everything
you will never know Truth.
16.2
You can enjoy and work and meditate,
but you will still yearn for That
which is beyond all experience,
and in which all desires are extinguished.
16.3
Everyone is miserable because they exert constant effort.
But no one understands this.
A ripe mind can become unshackled
upon hearing this one instruction.
16.4
The master idler,
to whom even blinking is a bother,
is happy.
But he is the only one.
16.5
When the mind is free of opposites
like, “This is done,” and, “This is yet undone,”
one becomes indifferent to
merit, wealth, pleasure, and liberation.
16.6
One who abhors sense objects avoids them.
One who desires them becomes ensnared.
One who neither abhors nor desires
is neither detached nor attached.
16.7
As long as there is desire —
which is the absence of discrimination —
there will be attachment and non-attachment.
This is the cause of the world.
16.8
Indulgence creates attachment.
Aversion creates abstinence.
Like a child, the sage is free of both
and thus lives on as a child.
16.9
One who is attached to the world
thinks renouncing it will relieve his misery.
One who is attached to nothing is free,
and does not feel miserable
even in the world.
16.10
He who claims liberation as his own,
as an attainment of a person,
is neither enlightened nor a seeker.
He suffers his own misery.
16.11
Though Hara, Hari,
or the lotus-born Brahma himself instruct you,
until you know Nothing,
you will never know Self.