Summary:
Nirvana Shatakam, Verse 4: Virtue and vice are invisible results of action, ripening as pleasure and pain – yet none belong to you. The body-mind is a machine running on accumulated causes you never consciously controlled, nor created. Since you didn't create it, its moral history isn't yours. Awareness is the non-doer: it has no arms, no decisions, and no sin. Claiming “I” into vice breeds guilt; claiming “I” into pleasure breeds dependency – both create unnecessary psychological pressure. The enjoyer, enjoyed, and act of enjoying are mutually dependent – not one can exist without the other two. Yet the self can exist when all three are absent; meaning replaced by the knower (ie: know about-er), or the doer. Together they form the triad that keeps the mind cycling through lists of things to do, enjoy, and know.
Nirvana Shatakam, Verse 5: Fear of death arises only through identification with the body, yet consciousness has no birthday or death-day. How to show this? One non-conscious atom plus another non-conscious atom will never equal a blob of conscious atoms. You can stack matter infinitely – carbon, oxygen, neurons, synapses – and at no point in that pile does awareness suddenly switch on. Organizing inert things cannot conjure a conscious principle from nowhere, just as rearranging stones into a perfect circle never makes the stones glow. And if consciousness was never born of a body, it equally has no parents, no caste, no gender – all of these belong entirely to the body and its story. Going further, every relationship – parent, child, friend, guru – requires a “me” and an “other,” but consciousness is one without a second, leaving nothing to relate to.
Nirvana Shatakam, Verse 6: Consciousness is without divisions – meaning you will never find it in any particular experience. Every experience is already a division: different from the one before, different from the one after. To say “I will find it in deep meditation” places it in a future division. To say “I found it once” places it in a past division. Consciousness cannot be an object of experience because it is the awareness to which all experiences are presented. Consciousness is also formless – think about it this way: you have seen countless things in your life, yet none of them left a mark on awareness itself. Thoughts come and go, emotions rise and fall, experiences pile up over decades, and yet the awareness watching all of it remains completely clean, unstained, untouched. Forms appear within it but never become it, the same way a room fills with music and then goes silent, while the space of the room never changed at all. And yet – every form that appears is consciousness alone, the way every pot you see is nothing but clay wearing a shape. The form is temporary, the content is consciousness. Even idea of “bondage” and “liberation” is just another pot. So you're neither.
Nirvana Shatakam – Verse 4
न पुण्यं न पापं न सौख्यं न दुःखं ।
न मन्त्रं न तीर्थम् न वेदाः न यज्ञाः ।
अहम् भोजनम् न एव भोज्यम् न भोक्ता ।
चित्-आनन्द-रूपः शिवः अहम् शिवः अहम् ॥
na puṇyaṃ na pāpaṃ na saukhyaṃ na duḥkhaṃ (I have neither virtue nor vice; neither pleasure nor pain.)
na mantraṃ na tīrtham na vedāḥ na yajñāḥ (Nor the sacred chants, nor pilgrimage; nor the scriptures, nor the sacrificial rituals.)
aham bhojanam na eva bhojyam na bhoktā (I am neither the act of enjoying, nor the enjoyable object, nor the enjoyer.)
cit-ānanda-rūpaḥ śivaḥ aham śivaḥ aham ॥ 4 ॥
(I have) neither virtue nor vice, pleasure nor pain, the sacred chants, nor the pilgrimage; the scriptures nor the sacrificial rituals. I am neither the act of enjoying, nor the enjoyable object, nor the enjoyer. I am pure Knowledge and Bliss, I am Siva, auspiciousness itself.
1) “I have neither virtue nor vice; neither pleasure nor pain” (na puṇyaṃ na pāpaṃ na saukhyaṃ na duḥkhaṃ)
Puṇyaṃ is merit – the invisible good result stored up from noble, scripture-sanctioned action.
Pāpaṃ is its opposite – the invisible bad result from prohibited action.
Together they are the seeds that ripen later as saukhyaṃ (pleasure) and duḥkhaṃ (pain).
So the line declares your freedom from all four – because none of them ever belonged to you. Here's two logics why…
Logic 1: What Is Actually “Doing”?
Ask yourself: what is doing anything, ever?
Take an act of violence – a pāpaṃ.
The arm pulls the trigger. But the arm doesn't move on its own; it moves because a thought fired first.
And that thought didn't arise alone either – it came from a chain of prior conditioning, today's weather, bad decision-making, fear, anger, upbringing, circumstance.
And you certainly didn't consciously fire-and-wire each individual brain cell – which caused the arm to punch, or vocal cords to shout derogative sounds.
All of it belongs to body-mind functioning – a machine running on its own accumulated causes.
You didn't even create your given body-mind. Proof? It you did, would've certainly made some changes. Stronger, prettier, smarter, taller, etc. Thus if you didn't create it, it doesn't make sense to claim vices-virtues performed by it as mine.
Sun metaphor: Think of sunlight falling on a stage. The actors (body-minds) move, weep, fight, celebrate – the light illuminates every bit of it, yet the sunlight itself never grieves or dances. You are that light. While your mind performs its virtuous acts, body experiences its pleasures and pains – as that’s what it’s designed to do.
Logic 2: Nature of a thing can never change.
Fire's heat never departs from fire; that's why heat is fire's nature. Sweetness can’t depart from sugar.
Your nature is awareness.
Non-doer (akarta):
Awareness is not something that has arms, legs or a mind which makes decisions.
Thus awareness is akarta (non-doer).
Since awareness is non-doer, it means it has no papam (which is produced by doing a sinful action).
Since you (awareness) have no papam, it means you have no suffering either (which always comes from consequence of a sinful action).
Your nature remains in every experience:
Awareness is also described as that which remains in every experience.
What remains in every experience or thought? Awareness. If Awareness wasn't there, you wouldn't know it happened.
And what is the nature of experience or thought? It arrives and departs. That includes fleeting joys and sufferings. Thus they're not your nature.
If either were your nature, joy or suffering would never leave your existence; not even for a millisecond; not even in deep sleep.
Remember the sweet-sugar example. Nature of something can never leave it, not even for an instant. And what can never leave you; no matter what experience is thrown your way? Awareness.
For instance, right now there is experience of virtuousness (pleasure), but yesterday there might have been experience of having erred (pain). And tomorrow’s pain/pleasure isn’t here today. Through it all, awareness remained.
Put another way: if virtue were truly intrinsic to you, then the moment vice appeared, you would disappear.
The Problem With Claiming Ownership
The moment you insert “I” into vice, guilt takes over – one stops problem-solving and start punishing oneself – instead of correcting course.
Claim “I” into pain, and anxiety hijacks clear thinking; claim “I” into pleasure, and you become dependency-bound, terrified of losing it.
Misidentification always creates psychological pressure where none was necessary.
2) “I am not the sacred chants, nor pilgrimage; nor the scriptures, nor the sacrificial rituals” (na mantraṃ na tīrtham na vedāḥ na yajñāḥ)
In this verse, Śaṅkarācārya is not rejecting any of these.
Mantra, tīrtham (holy place / pilgrimage), Veda, and yajna (rituals) have an important place in a seeker’s life. They can purify the mind, nourish devotion, and turn attention away from social media (ie: habit of instant gratification).
But the verse is asking a subtler question: What am I in truth?
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- CHANTING: A mantra is made of words and sounds. You may chant it, hear it, remember it, or forget it. Since all these changes are known to you, you are not the mantra. You are the knower in whose presence the chanting takes place.
- SACRED PLACES: A tīrtham is a place you can travel to. Your body may go there; your mind may feel uplifted there; your devotion may deepen there. Yet the place is an object of experience, and you are the one to whom that experience is known. Ātmā is not reached by travelling.
- SCRIPTURES: Vedas are a means of knowledge. It serves like a mirror that helps you see your true face (your true self). However, the reflection depends on the face. The face doesn't depend on the reflection. So Shankara is pointing out; scripture are only the means; they are not the end. Some put their identity into the Veda; mistake!
- RITUALS: Yajña is an action, meant to produce a result. What is produced can begin and end. Your essential nature, cit-ānanda-rūpa, is not something newly gained through ritual; it is what remains present before, during, and after every ritual.
Logic of line 1 & 2…
Line 1 helps reduce identity with moral history (puṇya-pāpa), and emotional states (sukha-duḥkha).
Line 2 helps reduce identity with the remaining “spiritual seeker” who chants, travels, studies, and performs rites. This is often the hardest layer to release, because spiritual identity feels holy, unlike guilt or pleasure-seeking. But it's still an identity built on doing, and doing belongs to the nāham (not-self), not to aham (self).
Once you recognize yourself as cit-ānanda-rūpaḥ – the very nature of consciousness and without a second – you see that no chant can add to you and no pilgrimage can bring you closer to yourself, because you were never away.
3) “I am neither the act of enjoying, nor the enjoyable object, nor the enjoyer” (aham bhojanam na eva bhojyam na bhoktā)
Definitions:
Bhojanam means the process of experiencing or enjoying. Bhojyam is the object enjoyed – food, a sound, a sight, comfort, praise, or any experience sought. Bhoktā is the enjoyer, the person who says, “I am happy. I like this. I suffered that. You touched my heart.”
Three That Cannot Exist Without Each Other; They are Mithya (Dependent on each other)
Mutual Dependance:
There can be no enjoyer (bhokta) without something enjoyed (bhojyam). There can be no enjoyment (bhojanam) without an object (bhojyam), and someone enjoying it (bhokta). So they're mutually dependent.
RULE: Anything that depends on something else; you are free of that.
Even to say, “I am the knower [the know ABOUT-er]” (jñātā / pramata) – it requires known object and the knowing (instrument capable of making sense of what’s being seen).
Or to say “I am the doer (kartā)” – it requires, or depends on instructions given to it, one action apart from other actions, and object acted upon.
Triad (triputi):
Together these three form what Vedanta calls the triad (tripuṭi). And they keep you busy with 3 lists: List of things to do, to enjoy, to know about.
When you cross one out, two more appear.
Point is, the triputi is creation of the mind.
For example, in a dream, you may quarrel with someone, shout, feel wounded – and yet when you wake up, you realize the mind created the shouter, shouted, and shouting. You (waker) were none of them while they were going on. You were the person lying in bed, not shouting.
When you “wake up” through knowledge, one’s buddhi sees the experiencer, knower, doer – never displaces the one observing them, including observing their absence in meditation or dream.
A triad needs a witness to register it; that witness itself cannot be one of the three items, exactly as your eye can see three objects on a table without becoming a fourth object on that table.
Logic How None are Self
For example, when a sweet is eaten, the tongue meets the sweet, a pleasant sensation arises, and the mind declares, “I enjoy this.”
But look carefully: the sweet is an object; it comes and goes. The sensation also comes and goes. Even the thought “I am enjoying” rises in the mind and disappears.
Since all three (enjoyer, enjoyed, enjoyment) are known — none of them can be your essential nature, as the knower can never be the known.
Bhokta is not Self
The self is not the bhokta (enjoyer – the one entity amongst 8 billions, who goes “wow!”).
The enjoyer is the jīva: consciousness appearing to be identified with body, senses, and mind.
When the mind is pleased, the jīva calls itself happy. When the mind is disturbed, it calls itself unhappy.
Whereas the jivanmukta (enlightened being) still feels the body going through suffering and happiness – but cognitively appreciates – emotion is domain of the body-mind, and not domain of awareness.
Conclusion:
na eva bhojyam na bhoktā – I am neither the enjoyer, the enjoyed, nor the enjoying – it isn't asking you to stop eating your dinner or stop appreciating music. It's pointing to the light by which the whole tripuṭi is even visible.
Nirvana Shatakam – Verse 5
न मे मृत्यु-शङ्का न मे जाति-भेदः ।
पिता न एव मे न एव माता न जन्म ।
न बन्धुः न मित्रम् गुरुः न एव शिष्यः ।
चित्-आनन्द-रूपः शिवः अहम् शिवः अहम् ॥
na me mṛtyu-śaṅkā na me jāti-bhedaḥ (I have no fear of death, nor any distinction of caste.)
pitā na eva me na eva mātā na janma (I have neither father nor mother, nor (even) birth.)
na bandhuḥ na mitram guruḥ na eva śiṣyaḥ (No relation, nor friend; for me there is no Guru and no disciple.)
cit-ānanda-rūpaḥ śivaḥ aham śivaḥ aham ॥ 5 ॥
I have no fear of death, nor (have I) any distinction of caste. I have neither father, nor mother nor (even) birth, no relation, nor friend. For me there is no Guru and no disciple. I am pure Knowledge and Bliss, I am all auspiciousness, I am Siva.
1) “I have no fear of death, nor any distinction of caste” (na me mṛtyu-śaṅkā na me jāti-bhedaḥ)
“I have neither father nor mother, nor birth” (pitā na eva me na eva mātā na janma)
Fear of death arises only when you've deeply identified yourself with the body. However your nature is Consciousness which has no birthday and no death-day. It doesn’t arrive/leave with the body.
How to show consciousness doesn’t arrive with birth of body?
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- The infant body, child body, and adult body are entirely different, yet the self-evident fact of “I am”, remains continuous. Everything else grew as the body-mind grew. The only principle that remained exactly the same is, “I know that I am. I know that I exist”. Therefore consciousness is independent of any kind of body state.
- Combining inert atoms (that make up the body) cannot logically produce the conscious principle.
- To say “Consciousness depends on brain”, is to also say, it depends on time, since the brain grows within time”. However, our experience contradicts this, showing Consciousness doesn't depend on time. For instance we say, “I lost track of time, There was no sense of time, etc”.
Meaning, if consciousness isn’t related to body, then it’s not related to death of body, caste, gender, nationality, nor the parents associated to the body.
You can only say “I have parents”, if you concede that “I am good as the body”.
2) “No relation, nor friend; for me there is no Guru and no disciple” (na bandhuḥ na mitram guruḥ na eva śiṣyaḥ)
Every single word describes a relationship, and a relationship needs two things: a “me” and an “other” – standing apart from each other.
But consciousness is not one unit (eg: śiṣya) facing another unit (eg: guru). It is one, without a second – and where there is no second thing, there is nothing left to be related to.
Remember, even the most sacred relationship of guru-śiṣya — exists at the level of body, mind, and intellect.
Teacher-student is necessary at transactional level, however once you recognize “My nature is cit-ānanda-rūpaḥ”, the distinction between guru and shishya collapses.
Thus “no bandhu, no mitra” isn't a statement about the jnani/jivanmukta being lonely — it’s your direct appreciation of One reality appearing as different roles.
Nirvana Shatakam – Verse 6
अहम् निर्विकल्पः निराकार-रूपः ।
विभुत्वात् च सर्वत्र सर्व-इन्द्रियाणाम् ।
न च असङ्गतम् न एव मुक्तिः न मेयः ।
चित्-आनन्द-रूपः शिवः अहम् शिवः अहम् ॥
aham nirvikalpaḥ nirākāra-rūpaḥ (I am devoid of dualities and am formless.)
vibhutvāt ca sarvatra sarva-indriyāṇām (By virtue of my all-pervading nature, I am everywhere – in and through all the senses.)
na ca asaṅgatam na eva muktiḥ na meyaḥ (I am unattached; I am neither liberation, nor am I something measurable/knowable as an object.)
cit-ānanda-rūpaḥ śivaḥ aham śivaḥ aham ॥ 6 ॥
I am devoid of dualities and am formless. I exist everywhere, pervading all the senses. I am always the same and (I have) neither freedom nor bondage. I am pure Knowledge and Bliss. I am auspiciousness, I am Siva.
1a) “I am devoid of dualities” (aham nirvikalpaḥ)
I am free from all divisions, such as experiences (which are always different between each other).
Meaning, I am not any particular state that’s yet to be experienced. Because “state” means its placed in a future division, away from present division. This means there’s no better, second version of Me somewhere to be found in the future.
Analogy:
Pots are many, clay is one. Thus clay is nirvikalpa; there’s no two clays. Clay transcends vikalpa (division). Divisions belongs to forms-names, not to the content.
For instance, you can say “pot” is different from “plate”. They have different functions, shape and size. They can even compete against each other. But from standpoint of clay, no competition is possible.
So enlightened clay-pot can say “I am nirvikalpa (division-less)”. For pot to know the clay, it need not get rid of itself.
Sleep Nirvikalpa vs. Yogic Induced Nirvikalpa
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- You experience your nirvikalpa (divisionless) nature in sleep, but overwhelmed by tamas, thus unable to appreciate it.
- Whereas in yoga, one's nature as nirvikalpa – can be appreciated if induced through years of practice. However, moment a thought or inquiry comes, the nirvikalpa is gone. Then yogi wants to induce it again. One way to induce yogic nirvikalpa is via antahkumbaka pranayama; breath retention — inhale 4 > fill lungs to 80% capacity > hold 4 > exhale 6 > repeat.
- Whereas advaita practitioner recognizes by knowledge, “I, as awareness, am nirvikalpa right now”.
1b) “I am formless” (aham nirākāra-rūpaḥ)
I have no particular form. That’s why consciousness can assume any form, because it’s not any one particular form.
EG: See flower, there’s flower-consciousness. Flower goes away and is replaced by wall-consciousness. Meaning consciousness neither becomes flower-form, nor wall-form. Else would see flower-wall-etc-consciousness all at once. However, this isn’t the case; there’s discreet form-consciousness each moment. Meaning consciousness transcends all forms.
My experience proves I am formless consciousness, as no prior seen/heard form sticks onto my consciousness.
Formlessness is nature of consciousness.
2) “By virtue of my all-pervading nature, I am everywhere – in and through all the senses” (vibhuḥ vyāpya sarvatra sarva indriyāṇām)
Previous line said “I’m free from all forms”, and this line says “All forms are myself alone”.
Smells, sounds, and sensations are many and varied. My nature is lending them existence, just as clay lends existence to both the ugliest pot ever seen, and most sensational.
3) [Ver 1] “I am unattached; I am neither liberation, nor am I something measurable/knowable as an object” (na ca asaṅgatam na eva muktiḥ na meyaḥ)
Objection:
If every thought and object is consciousness, and every though/object is involved (sanga), that makes consciousness involved too!
Answer:
Objects, which are constantly involved amongst themselves — are not separate from all-pervasive space that accommodates them.
Yet space is (asanga) uninvolved, unattached. For instance, jasmine aroma doesn't pass its attributes to space. If it did, then the jasmine aroma would forever remain in one section of space.
Furthermore…
Space is not separate from consciousness.
If objects accommodated by space, don't pass their attributes to space, then they also don't pass attributes to consciousness.
And we can prove this by experience…
As we said earlier, flower-consciousness, replaced by… hand-consciousness, replaced by… space-consciousness, replaced by… joy-consciousness. They are all objects known to Me. And none of them stick to Me. Concept of space or time, isn't constantly occupying my existence 24/7.
3) [Ver 2] “I am always the same and (I have) neither freedom nor bondage” (sadā me samatvaṃ na muktiḥ na bandhaḥ)
I have neither freedom nor bondage: Both are thoughts.
Story of cow: Boy, being advised by guru, pretended to tie the 7 cows as he didn’t have rope for all 7 cows. Cows thought they were bound; so they stayed put. Next morning, boy couldn’t get them to graze grass. Guru told boy to pretend to untie the cows. Cows thinking they’re unbound, went grazing. The cow’s notion of “I’m bound” and “I’m free” were both notions. The notion “I’m free” only comes after “I’m bound”.
But Atma was never bound to begin with, thus moksha (freedom) doesn’t belong to atma. So moksha isn’t “I’m now free for the first time”, but recognizing “I have always been free”.
Meaning, your bondage is notional. Moksha is knowing and completely accepting “cidananda rupa shivo’ham”.
— End of Nirvana Shatakam Classes —
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Recorded 17 Oct, 2026