Few men realize that with pleasure there is pain, and with pain, pleasure; and as pain is disgusting, so is pleasure, as it is the twin-brother of pain. Both should be turned aside by men whose reason is balanced. Why will not men seek freedom from being played upon? The sage wants liberty; he finds that sense-objects are all vain and that there is no end to pleasures and pains. When a man begins to see the vanity of worldly things, he will feel he ought not to be thus played upon or borne along by nature. That is slavery. When one realizes all this slavery, then comes the desire to be free; and intense desire comes. If a piece of burning charcoal were placed on a man’s head, see how he struggles to throw it off. Similar will be the struggles for freedom of a man who really understands that he is a slave of nature. This is what Mumukshutva or the desire to be free is.

1. 1
Yoga Vashishtha of Valmiki
Book II – The Aspirant Who Longs for Liberation
Chapter 1: The Liberation of Shukadeva
Book II
The Aspirant Who Longs for Liberation
(Mumukshu Khanda)
This section deals with the preparations required
of the person who seeks God and the moral and
mental qualities necessary to qualify for the
spiritual path.
Vashishtha states that peace of mind (shanti),
contentment (santosha), keeping the company
of realized sages (satsanga), and inquiry into
the nature of the soul (vichara) are the four
sentinels that guard the gates to moksha, or
liberation.
The belief that one is confined by fate is
severely condemned and the person who seeks
spiritual development is urged to rely on
personal efforts for progress on the spiritual
path.
The person should not shun action but should
learn to be indifferent to its fruits. One should not
be affected by the pleasures and pains that are the
inevitable accompaniment of action.
The person is advised to keep the company of
saints and to study the scriptures (Shastras),
particularly those dealing with self-knowledge
(atma vidya).

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Yoga Vashishtha of Valmiki
Book II – The Aspirant Who Longs for Liberation
Chapter 1: The Liberation of Shukadeva
What is Mumukshutva?
Mumukshutva is the intense desire to be free. All the
misery we have is of our own choosing; such is our
nature:
• We run headlong after all sorts of misery, and are
unwilling to be freed from them. Every day we run
after pleasure and before we reach it, we find it is
gone; it has slipped through our fingers.
• Still we do not cease from our mad pursuit, but on
and on we go, blinded fools that we are.
As born slaves to nature, money and wealth,
wives and children, we are always chasing a wisp
of straw, mere chimeras, and going through an
innumerable round of lives without obtaining
what we seek.
We seek all these to be happy and never meet with
misery, but the more we go towards happiness, the
more it goes away from us:
• And if we study our own lives, we find how little of
happiness there is in us, and how little in truth we
have gained in the course of the wild-goose-chase of
the world.
It is because happiness and misery are the obverse
and reverse of the same coin, he who takes
happiness must take misery also:

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Yoga Vashishtha of Valmiki
Book II – The Aspirant Who Longs for Liberation
Chapter 1: The Liberation of Shukadeva
• We all have this foolish idea that we can have
happiness without misery, and it has taken such
possession of us that we have no control over the
senses.
The majority of men have more or less undeveloped
brains. One in a million we see with a well-developed
brain.
Few men realize that with pleasure there is pain,
and with pain, pleasure; and as pain is disgusting, so is
pleasure, as it is the twin-brother of pain:
• Both should be turned aside by men whose reason is
balanced. Why will not men seek freedom from
being played upon?
The sage wants liberty; he finds that sense-objects
are all vain and that there is no end to pleasures and
pains:
• When a man begins to see the vanity of worldly
things, he will feel he ought not to be thus played
upon or borne along by nature. That is slavery.
When one realizes all this slavery, then comes the
desire to be free; and intense desire comes. If a piece of
burning charcoal were placed on a man’s head, see how
he struggles to throw it off:
• Similar will be the struggles for freedom of a man who
really understands that he is a slave of nature. This is
what Mumukshutva or the desire to be free is.

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Yoga Vashishtha of Valmiki
Book II – The Aspirant Who Longs for Liberation
Chapter 1: The Liberation of Shukadeva
Book II, Chapter 1
The Liberation of Shukadeva – His Need for
Confirmation
1After Rama delivered his speech before the assembly,
sage Vishwamitra, who sat before Rama, tenderly
said, 2“Rama, you are the best of the most intelligent,
and you have nothing more to learn that you have not
already come to know by your own observation.
3You have an understanding clear like a mirror, and
your questions serve to polish and reflect your
understanding to others.
4You have a mind like that of Shuka, the son of the great
Vyasa, who knowing the knowable by intuition,
was yet in need of some teaching to confirm his belief.”
5Rama said, “How was it that Shuka, son of the great
Vyasa, did not at first rest assured of his
knowledge of the knowable, but then came to be
settled in his belief?”
6Vishwamitra answered, “Hear me relate to you,
Rama, the story of Shukadeva, whose case was exactly
like yours. (a) The narration of this story prevents future
births.”
Vishwamitra speaking:
7There is the great Vyasa sitting on his seat of gold by
your father’s side, swarthy in his complexion like a
coal-black hill, but blazing in brilliance like the
burning sun.

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Yoga Vashishtha of Valmiki
Book II – The Aspirant Who Longs for Liberation
Chapter 1: The Liberation of Shukadeva
8His son named Shuka was a boy of great learning
and wisdom, of a moon-like countenance, with a
stature sedate as a sacrificial altar.
9Like you, he reflected in his mind on the vanity
of worldly affairs and became equally indifferent
to all its concerns.
10It was then that this great minded youth was led
by his own discriminative understanding to a
long inquiry after what was true, which he found
at last by his own investigation.
11Having obtained the highest truth, he was still
unsettled in his mind, and could not trust his own
knowledge.
12His mind grew indifferent to its perceptions of
the transitory enjoyments of the world, and, like
Chataka cuckoos, thirsted only after the dew
drops of heavenly bliss.
13Once upon a time the clear sighted Shuka
finding his father, sage Krishna Dwaipayana
Vyasa, sitting quietly alone, he reverently asked
him, 14“Tell me, O sage, where does this
commotion of the world arise, and how can it
subside? What is its cause, how far does it extend,
and where is its end?”

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Yoga Vashishtha of Valmiki
Book II – The Aspirant Who Longs for Liberation
Chapter 1: The Liberation of Shukadeva
15Sage Vyasa, who knew the nature of the soul, being
asked this by his son, explained to him clearly all that
was to be said.
16Shuka thought that he already knew all this by his
good understanding and therefore did not think much
of his father’s instructions.
17Vyasa, understanding the thoughts of his son,
replied that he himself knew no better than his
son about the true nature of these things, 18but
there was a king in this land named Janaka who
well knew the knowledge of the knowable, and
from whom Shuka could learn everything.
19Being thus directed by his father, Shuka went to the
city of Videha at the foot of Mount Sumeru, which city
was under the rule of Janaka.
20The door keeper informed the high minded Janaka of
his coming, telling him that Shuka the son of Vyasa was
waiting at the gate.
21Janaka who understood that Shuka had come to
learn from him, gave no heed to the news but held
his silence for seven days afterwards.
22The king then ordered Shuka to be brought to
the outer compound, where he had to remain
irritated in spirit for seven more days.

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Yoga Vashishtha of Valmiki
Book II – The Aspirant Who Longs for Liberation
Chapter 1: The Liberation of Shukadeva
23Shuka was then commanded to enter the inner
apartment, where he continued a week more without
seeing the king.
24Here Janaka entertained the moon-faced Shuka
with an abundance of food, perfumes and lusty
maidens.
25But neither those vexations nor these
entertainments could affect the tenor of Shuka’s
mind, which remained firm as a rock against the
blasts of wind.
26He remained there like the full moon, tranquil in his
desires, silent and contented in his mind.
27King Janaka, having come to know the disposition of
Shuka’s mind, had him brought to his presence, where
seeing the complacency of his soul, he rose up and
bowed down to him.
28Janaka said, “You have accomplished to the full
all your duties in this world, and you have
obtained the object of your heart’s desire to its
utmost extent. What do you now desire for which
you are welcome from me?”
29Shuka said, “Tell me, my guide, what is the
source of all this bustle (of worldly life), and tell
me also how it may soon subside.”

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Yoga Vashishtha of Valmiki
Book II – The Aspirant Who Longs for Liberation
Chapter 1: The Liberation of Shukadeva
30Vishwamitra said: Being thus asked by Shuka,
Janaka told him the same things that he had learned
from the great soul that is his father.
31Shuka then said, “All this I have come to know
long before by my own intuition, and then from
the speech of my father in answer to my question.
32You sage, who are the most eloquent of all, have
spoken to the same effect, and the same is found
to be the true meaning of the scriptures.
33That the world is a creation of will and loses
itself with the absence of our desires, and that
it is an accursed and unsubstantial world after all,
are the conclusions arrived at by all sages.”
34“Now tell me truly, O long armed prince, so that
you may set my mind may be set at rest from its
wandering all about the world. What do you think
this world to be?”
35Janaka replied, “There is nothing more certain,
O sage, than what you know by yourself and have
heard from your father.
36There is but one undivided intelligent spirit
known as the Universal Soul and nothing else. It
becomes confined by its desires (mental

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Yoga Vashishtha of Valmiki
Book II – The Aspirant Who Longs for Liberation
Chapter 1: The Liberation of Shukadeva
conditioning) and becomes freed by its lack of
them.”
37“You have truly come to the knowledge of the
knowable, whereby your great soul has desisted
from attachment to objects of enjoyment and
vision.
38You must be a hero to have overcome your
desires for the lengthening chain of attractive
enjoyments while still in your early youth. What
more do you want to hear?”
39“Even your father, with all his learning in every
science and his devotion to austerities, has not
arrived to the state of perfection like you.
40I am a student of Vyasa and you are his son, but
by your abandonment of the taste for the
enjoyments of life, you are greater than both of us.
41You have obtained whatever is obtainable by the
comprehension of your mind. You take no interest
in the outer and visible world, so you are liberated
from it and have nothing to doubt.”
42Being thus advised by the magnanimous Janaka,
Shuka remained silent with his mind fixed in the
purely supreme object.

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Yoga Vashishtha of Valmiki
Book II – The Aspirant Who Longs for Liberation
Chapter 1: The Liberation of Shukadeva
43Being devoid of sorrow and fear, and released
from all efforts, exertions and doubts, he went to
a peaceful summit of Mount Meru to obtain his
final absorption.
44There he passed ten thousand years in a state of
unalterable meditation, until at last he broke his
mortal coil, and was extinguished in the Supreme
Soul like a lamp without oil.
45Thus purified from the stain of rebirth by
abstention from earthly desires, the great soul
Shuka sank into the holy state of the Supreme
Spirit (nirvikalpa samadhi), just like a drop of
water mixes with the waters or merges into the
depth of the ocean.
*******
(a) The narration of this story prevents future births
implies: “By hearing alone to any discourse,
liberation is not possible. What it implies is that
armed with this knowledge one gets
motivated to seek liberation from this ever
changing world. Reflect over what you hear and
then put it in practice because liberation has to be
achieved while in human body under the guidance
of an adept Teacher and not by mere words of a
discourse.”