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Garudapurana 1.236

English (machine translation) 1.236

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1.236.1

The glorious Garuḍa Mahāpurāṇa: 236.
The Blessed Lord said:
I shall proclaim the knowledge of the Self, listen Nārada, according to the reality:
they declare Sāṅkhya to be non-duality, and yoga to be one-pointedness of mind therein.

1.236.2

Endowed with non-dual yoga, they are freed from intense bondage.
Past, begun, and future karma is destroyed through awakening.

1.236.3

With the axe of right inquiry having cut down the tree of saṃsāra,
through the sacred ford of knowledge and dispassion, he attains the abode of Viṣṇu.

1.236.4

Waking, dreaming, and deep sleep are called the triple city of Māyā.
Everything is included right here, not in the eternal, non-dual state.

1.236.5

Devoid of name, form, and action, all that is the supreme state.
Having created the universe, the infinite Lord Himself entered into it.

1.236.6

I know this Person of the nature of consciousness, beyond darkness.
'I am He'—this is for liberation; there is no other path to freedom.

1.236.7

Hearing, reflecting, and meditating are the means to knowledge.
Liberation is not attained through sacrifice, gifts, austerities, sacred fords, or Vedas,

1.236.8

as [it is] by a certain renunciation, or by meditation, worship, works, and the like.
The statement of the Veda is twofold: 'Perform action' and 'Renounce.'

1.236.9

Sacrifices and other rituals of the liberated and desireless are for the sake of release;
here some have indeed declared them to be for the purification of the mind.

1.236.10

Liberation does not come from knowledge in a single lifetime for those who perceive duality;
those fallen from yoga and those of poor yoga are brahmins born into families of yogins.

1.236.11

A creature is bound by action; through knowledge, he is freed from worldly existence.
Therefore one should resort to knowledge of the Self; whatever is other than this is ignorance.

1.236.12

When all desires that reside in his heart are released, / then he attains immortality even while living; there is no doubt.

1.236.13

Because of pervasiveness, how does it go? Who goes, and where does it go? / Because of infinitude, there is no place; because of formlessness, whence is movement?

1.236.14

Because of non-duality, there is no one; because of being consciousness, whence could there be insentience? / That which is intended for another is [merely] the movement and abiding of thought and speech.

1.236.15

How can there be going, coming, or abiding for that which is like space? / The waking, dreaming, and deep sleep [states] are imagined through māyā.

1.236.16

The real entity belonging to the luminous [state] is in the wise, which is unbroken and pure; / as our Self is dear to you, so is it dear to all.

1.236.17

Just as the mind [is established] in the path of awareness, so it is in the opinion of all, / always, of all beings and of all things, O great sage.

1.236.18

I am not this: knowledge of the Self, therefore, is full and unbroken. / Waking and dreaming states are so produced, as well as the bliss of deep sleep.

1.236.19

If it does not exist, for whom does the recollection of a forgotten thing arise? / Let it be truth; and so is the subtle, and likewise the supreme, bodiless.

1.236.20

If it does not exist, how could there be the experiencing of all pleasures and pains? / Would not the omniscient always and everywhere enter into the heart of all?

1.236.21

Having resorted [to it] as a witness, who knows the activity? / Truth, knowledge, infinity—it cannot be distinct, nor is truth separate from knowledge.

1.236.22

Bliss is not separate from infinity, nor is infinity separate from bliss. / You alone are the supreme Brahman, characterised by truth, knowledge, and the rest.

1.236.23

Having known 'I am Brahman, the supreme reality,' one becomes the knower of all, / just as when one [lump of] clay is known, all this moving and unmoving [is known].

1.236.24

Just as by one gold jewel all that is made of gold becomes / known, so too the entire world is known by the Lord [and] by the knower [of truth].

1.236.25

Just as through the fault of darkness a rope is not properly seen, / so through the fault of delusion the Self is not properly seen.

1.236.26

Due to distinctions such as a snake, a water-stream, and the like, an object is imagined otherwise; / through space and the rest, through endowed forms and so on, the Self is imagined otherwise.

1.236.27

Even that substance which is perceptible is spoken of as difficult to perceive, / just as it is imagined otherwise through space and the rest, through endowed forms and so on.

1.236.28

For just as a rope [is imagined as] a snake, an oyster shell as silver, / water in the path of a mirage, [yet does not yield] satisfaction, O Viṣṇu, so is the world.

1.236.29

[As] some twice-born afflicted by possession [thinks] 'Alas, I am a low-caste man', / but upon the destruction of the possession, contemplating again, considers himself a brāhmaṇa,

1.236.30

so the individual soul, entered by māyā, thinks 'I am the body'; / upon the destruction of māyā, it considers again its own nature: 'I am Brahman.'

1.236.31

Just as upon the destruction of possession a respected person looks upon the cruel [spirit] / without it, so this [soul looks upon] the destruction of māyā through the vision of its own nature.

1.236.32

Beginninglessness is common to both, but their essential nature is distinct: / the one is real, the other participates [in it]; upon inquiry, the supreme [alone is real, and the world is] false.

1.236.33

Though unborn, I take birth at once through my own māyā. / Through the will of māyā, that [reality] becomes twofold: husband and wife, pleasure, the world.

1.236.34

By twenty-eight divisions, the triad of guṇas is differentiated; / eighty-four [hundred thousand species] are observed, as well as the forms of men and women.

1.236.35

Among these the universe arises, like that born from fragments, through māyā; / these [things], such as name, form, and action, exist at the beginning and at the end.

1.236.36

The conceptualisation of reality in time does not exist in the highest truth, / just as chariots and the like, existing in a dream, do not exist in truth at all.

1.236.37

Likewise in the waking state beings do not [exist] in [true] proximity; / duality arises through māyā in the conditions of waking and dreaming.

1.236.38

Thus this supreme Brahman is in both states of dream and waking; / deep sleep, the immovable form, is called the non-dual state.

1.236.39

Māyā is established only by non-inquiry; by inquiry it dissolves; / lacking sudden [independent reality], even that conceptualisation exists in time.

1.236.40

Thus the beginninglessness of that Self is established as one, born of truth; / because existence is beyond residue, thence comes the unreality of [apparent] existence.

1.236.41

Knowledge is thence infinite for us, full within the Self like a parrot; / not from eternal existence was I born; being uncreated, I am immortal. / Like a lamp, the light in the heart [shines]: 'I am Brahman' for liberation.

1.236.41.p1

Thus in the glorious Garuḍa Purāṇa, in the first section called the first part, in the section on conduct, the two hundred thirty-sixth chapter, named 'Description of the Nature of Self-Knowledge.'

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