Ashṭāvakra Moksha

Ashṭāvakra was a ṛshi (seer) whose body was dark and crooked on all eight limbs. The Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa tells his story in Chapters 29 and 30 of the Śrī Kṛshṇa Janana Khaṇḍa. He came to the Rāsa Maṇḍala in Vṛndāvana, sang a stotra (a hymn of praise) to Kṛshṇa, gave up his body, and went to Goloka. Kṛshṇa then told Rādhā who he was and why his body was crooked: the apsarā Rambhā had laid a śāpa (a curse) on him, and that śāpa became a grace.

Arrival at the Rāsa Maṇḍala

The Rāsalīlā was going on. The gopīs were dancing with Kṛshṇa in the sacred groves of Vṛndāvana. Then a strange figure came to the edge of the Rāsa Maṇḍala. It was the great ṛshi Ashṭāvakra. His skin was very dark. All eight of his limbs were badly crooked, and this is why he has his name: vakra means crooked, so Ashṭāvakra is “the eight-times-crooked one”. His body was thin from sixty thousand years of continuous tapas (austerity). He wore no clothes, like a paramahaṃsa who has long gone beyond all covering.

Ashṭāvakra shone with the power of his tapas. His eyes burned with knowledge. He walked toward the Rāsa Maṇḍala with slow, crooked steps, and his eyes were fixed on Kṛshṇa.

The gopīs were surprised by such a sight, and Rādhā laughed. It was not a cruel laugh. It came from a heart that was not ready for such a sight in the middle of the most beautiful night. Even so, her laugh was an aparādha (an offence) against a great tapasvin.

Kṛshṇa at once and gently held Rādhā back. He showed that the one who was coming was no common being, but a great ṛshi whose inner nature was far above his outer form. The gopīs fell silent and listened.

The Kṛshṇa stotra of Ashṭāvakra

Ashṭāvakra stood before Kṛshṇa and began to recite a stotra. Bhagavān Śaṅkara himself had taught it to him during his sixty thousand years of tapas on the Malaya mountain. The stotra came from Vaikuṇṭhaloka. Bhagavān Śaṅkara had received it in his own deepest meditation and gave it to Ashṭāvakra as the key to moksha.

The stotra praises Kṛshṇa in these ways:

• He is sattva-rajas-tamo-guṇātīta: he is beyond the three guṇas (sattva, rajas and tamas) that make up prakṛti, and he is also the seed from which all the guṇas rise.
• He is the bīja (seed) of all siddhas, those who have reached perfection.
• He is the source of all Vedic knowledge (veda-mūla).
• He is the brahma-vṛksha, the great tree of Brahman, and all creation is its branches.
• He is the ātman of all siddhas, the goal of all jñānīs, and the highest refuge of all devotees.
• He is the Paramātmā who stands equally in all beings.
• He is the sākshī (the witness) without whom no experience can be, the sat (being) without whom nothing exists, and the ānanda (bliss) that all creatures look for.
• He is both nirguṇa (beyond quality) and saguṇa (with divine qualities). The formless Brahman and the two-armed, dark, flute-playing Kṛshṇa of Goloka are declared to be one reality in different forms of self-showing.

As Ashṭāvakra sang, the gopīs listened in silence. The stotra did not come from thinking. It came from a heart emptied by sixty thousand years of tapas, and it carried the weight of that tapas in every syllable.

Ashṭāvakra’s moksha

When the stotra was finished, Ashṭāvakra turned to Kṛshṇa and let go of his prāṇa (life breath). He did it on purpose and with full awareness, as great tapasvins do when they choose the moment of leaving the body. His prāṇa merged into Kṛshṇa’s feet. The tejas (radiant energy) of sixty thousand years of tapas poured out of his body and merged into Kṛshṇa. He had eaten nothing in all those years and had lived only on the inner fire of tapas.

What was left of his body, worn down by sixty thousand years of fasting to the thinnest shell, turned to ash.

At that same moment a golden chariot came down from Goloka through the levels of creation, shining with divine light. With it came Kṛshṇa’s own pārshadas (eternal companions). They had forms like Kṛshṇa’s own, for the pārshadas of Goloka appear in the Kṛshṇa-rūpa as expressions of his ānanda. The chariot came to receive the jīva of Ashṭāvakra, now free of every covering, and to carry him to Goloka.

Kṛshṇa is the Paramātmā, beyond birth and death, and his very glance gives moksha. Then he did something that brought every witness to tears. He himself performed the antyeshṭi (the last rites) for Ashṭāvakra. He gathered the ash that was left of the ṛshi’s body, mourned as an ordinary human being would, and carried out the final rites with the care of a loving student for his guru or a son for his father. This act of Kṛshṇa gives the Purāṇa’s closest teaching: the Paramātmā is not cold to the passing of great devotees. He mourns their going even while he knows they have reached him.

Rādhā’s question

After the golden chariot had gone up and Kṛshṇa had finished the antyeshṭi, Rādhā came to Kṛshṇa with folded hands and asked: “Who was this great ṛshi? Why did he come? How did his strange form come about? How did he gain such great power of tapas? And what was the śāpa that made all eight of his limbs crooked and his body so dark?”

Kṛshṇa was pleased with her question. It gave him the chance to tell the whole story of a great ātmā’s journey to moksha. He told it from the beginning.

Brahmā’s mānasa-putras and the making of the ṛshis

The story begins at the start of creation. Brahmā’s first four mānasa-putras (sons born from his mind) were Sanaka, Sananda, Sanātana and Sanatkumāra. They refused the command to take part in sṛshṭi (creation and bringing forth of offspring) and went to the forest to live as renunciants. Brahmā was then left without helpers for creation.

Brahmā then made a line of ṛshis from the power of his own mind: Atri, Pulastya, Pulaha, Marīci, Bhṛgu, Aṅgiras, Kratu and Vasishṭha, and among others Voḍu, Kapila, Āsurī, Kavi, Śaṅku, Śaṅkha, Pañcaśīkha and Pracetasa. Each of these ṛshis was given its own duties for the keeping up and spreading of creation.

Among them was Pracetasa, a ṛshi of great tapas.

Asita’s birth and tapas

Pracetasa’s son was Asita. From birth he was turned wholly toward the Paramātmā. When he came to the age of tapas, he did very hard tapas for one thousand divine years. Each divine year equals 360 human years, so this is 360,000 human years. The heat of his tapas reached the higher worlds and troubled the devas.

Bhagavān Śiva was moved by Asita’s devotion. He appeared before him and offered a vara (a boon). Asita asked for the Shoḍaśākshara Mantra of Rādhā, the sixteen-syllable mantra of Rādhā, which is among the highest of all mantras in the Vaishṇava tradition. Bhagavān Śiva gave this vara and handed the mantra to him.

With the Rādhā-mantra Asita went on with his tapas, now aimed at Rādhā. The power of the Shoḍaśākshara Mantra draws Rādhā’s own attention. Rādhā is not separate from Kṛshṇa’s grace, and she appeared before Asita and asked what he wished for. Asita was still turned toward creation and dharma, and he asked for a son who would be worthy, who would carry great tapas and would at last reach moksha. Rādhā gave this vara.

Devala, Asita’s son, and Rambhā’s śāpa

By Rādhā’s vara a son was born to Asita, and his name was Devala. Devala was an aṃśa (a partial avatāra) of Bhagavān Śiva. Bhagavān Śiva’s own tapas-energy was in his very nature. He grew into a ṛshi of great power and knowledge and later took a wife named Ratnamālavatī.

At one time in his life as a householder ṛshi, Devala went to the sacred Gandhamādana mountain for long tapas. Gandhamādana is one of the great tapo-bhūmis (grounds for tapas) in Bhārata.

While Devala sat in tapas on Gandhamādana, the apsarā Rambhā came. Rambhā is the most famous of the celestial dancers and the most beautiful. She was drawn to the place of tapas, saw Devala in his prime, and came near him to pull him away from his tapas. The devas sometimes send apsarās to stop tapasvins from growing too strong. The Purāṇa makes clear that here Rambhā acted on her own wish.

Devala saw her purpose at once and refused her fully and firmly. He spoke of the dharma of tapasvins: one who is engaged in tapas has promised not to turn aside, and to accept the pleasures of the senses during tapas destroys the tapas and also the inner steadiness on which tapas rests. He refused with dignity and without anger.

Rambhā was put to shame by the refusal. Anger overcame her beauty, and she spoke a śāpa: “You refused me so easily, as if I were nothing. So all eight of your limbs shall become crooked, and your skin shall become very dark. You shall be the one called Ashṭāvakra.”

Devala was about to answer with a śāpa of his own when Bhagavān Kṛshṇa himself appeared. Kṛshṇa stopped Devala from cursing Rambhā and spoke to him: “Do not lay a śāpa on her. This śāpa, which looks like a punishment, is in truth a grace. The form it gives you, dark and crooked and ugly by the standards of the world, will take away all pride in form, all clinging to the beauty of the body, and every chance of being drawn away by the way others look at you. Free of these, you will dive wholly into tapas. The śāpa speeds your moksha. Bear it and go to the Malaya mountain. Do sixty thousand years of tapas there. I shall send you the Kṛshṇa stotra through Śaṅkara, and when your tapas is complete you will come to me in Vṛndāvana.”

So Kṛshṇa himself named Devala “Ashṭāvakra” and showed the real purpose of what looked like a punishment. Devala, now Ashṭāvakra, accepted it with perfect calm, for the word of the Paramātmā is not to be argued with, and he went to the Malaya mountain.

Sixty thousand years of tapas on the Malaya mountain

On the Malaya mountain, which is rich with sandalwood (candana) forests, Ashṭāvakra sat in tapas for sixty thousand years. During this time, as Kṛshṇa had promised, Bhagavān Śaṅkara came to Ashṭāvakra and gave him the Kṛshṇa stotra, the hymn that had been shown in Vaikuṇṭhaloka itself. Ashṭāvakra received it, learned it by heart and made it his own.

For sixty thousand years he took no food and lived by the inner fire of tapas alone. The body that was left at the end of this time was hardly more than a vessel for the prāṇa, an empty shell holding a vast store of tapas-power and the full strength of the Kṛshṇa stotra.

When the set time came, and Kṛshṇa played the Rāsalīlā in Vṛndāvana, Ashṭāvakra went from the Malaya mountain to Vṛndāvana. He was drawn by the same call of the veṇu (flute) that drew the gopīs. His answer was of another kind. It was not the madhura-bhakti of the gopīs. It was the jñāna-bhakti of a tapasvin who has known the Paramātmā through sixty thousand years of tapas and now comes to lay all that he has gathered at Kṛshṇa’s feet.

Sources

• Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa, Śrī Kṛshṇa Janana Khaṇḍa, Chapter 29 (Ashṭāvakra at the Rāsa Maṇḍala, his stotra, his moksha)
• Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa, Śrī Kṛshṇa Janana Khaṇḍa, Chapter 30 (Rādhā’s question and Kṛshṇa’s account of Ashṭāvakra’s origin)