Song of Perfect Contentment

Janaka's face shone with an inner light as he began to speak, his words flowing like a song.

"Master, I am undone. I am remade. I am neither. Let me share what flows through me now."

Ashtavakra nodded. "Speak, Janaka. Let the Self celebrate itself."

"Where is my kingdom? I cannot find it. Where is my body? It has dissolved into space. Where is my mind? It has become transparent, like air. I search for myself and find only vastness."

"And in that vastness?" Ashtavakra prompted.

"Peace. Such peace. Not the peace of a quiet room, but the peace of infinite space. Not the contentment of having achieved something, but the contentment of recognizing that there was never anything to achieve."

"What of your duties, O King?"

Janaka laughed. "They perform themselves. The mouth speaks when speaking is needed. The hands act when action arises. But there is no one behind them pushing. The river flows because it is the nature of water to flow. The king rules because that is what is happening through this form."

"And do you desire anything?"

"How can I desire when I am everything? The wave cannot desire the ocean—it is the ocean. I have no lack, so desire has no soil in which to grow. If something arises, it arises. If something departs, it departs. I watch, and I am content."

Ashtavakra's eyes softened. "You speak like one who has truly arrived."

"Arrived?" Janaka smiled. "I have realized there was nowhere to arrive. The journey was a dream. The seeker was a shadow. Only this remains—awareness aware of itself, needing nothing, rejecting nothing, at home everywhere."

"What would you say to those still seeking?"

"I would say: stop. Just stop. You are already what you seek. The effort to become creates the illusion that you are not. Rest for a moment—truly rest—and see what is already here. It has been waiting for you to notice."

"And when they say 'But I don't feel enlightened'?"

"Who is the one saying this? Look. The very awareness that says 'I don't feel enlightened' is enlightenment itself, momentarily wearing the costume of a seeker. Take off the costume. What remains?"

"Pure being," Ashtavakra completed.

"Pure being," Janaka agreed. "Neither male nor female, neither king nor peasant, neither learned nor ignorant. Just this. Always just this. The content of experience changes, but this—the awareness in which experience appears—never changes. I am That."

"And your song? Does it have an ending?"

"Songs end; the singer does not. This contentment has no beginning and no end. It is not a mood that came and will go. It is the nature of what I am. Even when the body-mind forgets—which it may—I will remain content. For I am not the body-mind. I am that which watches the body-mind remember and forget."

Ashtavakra placed his hand on Janaka's shoulder.

"You have surpassed your teacher, O King. Not in knowledge, for there is nothing to know. Not in attainment, for there is nothing to attain. But in simplicity—you have become so simple that even the teaching has dissolved."

Janaka's eyes glistened. "I am grateful beyond words. And yet, there is no one to be grateful and no one to receive gratitude. There is only this—life living itself, awareness aware of itself, love loving itself. What else could we call contentment?"

"Nothing else," Ashtavakra said. "This is it. This was always it. May your song never end—though in truth, it never began and never will end. It simply is."