AVG 3.10

Chapter 3 (Challenging The Seekers Understanding): Verse 10
चेष्टमानं शरीरं स्वं पश्यत्यन्यशरीरवत् ।
संस्तवे चापि निन्दायां कथं क्षुभ्येन्महाशयः॥ ३-१०॥

PURPORT:
The one with the broad awareness observes;
witnessing their own body acting as if it were
another's. As such, how can such a one be
disturbed or agitated by common praise or
reproach or disapproval?

TRANSLITERATION:
चेष्टमानम् शरीरम् स्वम् पश्यति अन्यशरीरवत् ।
ceṣṭamānam śarīram svam paśyati anyaśarīravat ।
संस्तवे च अपि निन्दायाम् कथम् क्षुभ्येत् महाशयः ॥ ३-१०॥
saṃstave ca api nindāyām katham kṣubhyet mahāśayaḥ ॥ 3-10॥

MEANING:
ceṣṭamānam (चेष्टमानम्) = performing/behaving/acting
śarīram (शरीरम्) = body
svam (स्वम्) = own/intrinsic
paśyati (पश्यति) = sees
anyaśarīravat (अन्यशरीरवत्) = like another's body (anya (अन्य) meaning other/another and śarīra (शरीर) body) ।
saṃstave (संस्तवे) = in common or simultaneous praise
ca (च) = and
api (अपि) = even
nindāyām (निन्दायाम्) = reproach/defamation/disapproval
katham (कथम्) = how
kṣubhyet (क्षुभ्येत्) = should be disturbed or agitated
mahāśayaḥ (महाशयः) = one having a magnanimous and broad disposition ॥ 3-10॥

COMMENT:
The seeking of awareness, the understanding of reality and the core quietude that we yearn can only come when self-identification is absolved thoroughly from ones thought processes. That is the basic message contained within this beautiful verse.
The process begins with the freeing of oneself from mores, cultures, upbringings, superstition and dogma - those commonly ascribed cultural touchpoints by which we measure and score each other. The process continues with discarding the idea that one is a man or a woman or a transgender - just the fact that one is part of a multifarious ocean of sentient creatures each of whom have their own unique forms of conscious experience and individual specialized umwelts** should be enough and internalized. The next step in this process is the casting away of the identity - the fact that one is this, that or the other. All of such made-up appellations should be discarded; such appellations are creations of our collective sub-culture that had considered humans to be at the apex of the chain*, when, in reality, we are links within the chain that has been causally balanced via evolution. The next step in the process is the abandonment of self-concern and the overriding urge within us to accumulate, collect and amass - whether in the form of material goods, wealth, fame, pleasures or other forms of entities that seem to be culturally imputed with value.
All of this does not in any way, shape or form mean that one needs to be imprudent and irresponsible. No, it does not mean that. Pure awareness begins to seep into the mind when the mind is free of thoughts of the self and ones aim centers towards divesting one's material and spiritual baggage to a level where one is not consumed by the thoughts, worries or problems that such baggage might bring into ones mind. The stilling of thoughts is the objective and the results of such a stilling is beautifully portrayed in these lines when Ashtavakra mentions that the mind of a stilled one does not differentiate their own body as separate from another's; the imputation is that one who sees this way has ceased to self-identify with emotions, feelings or other thought fluctuations. The ideas of fear, blame, praise, anger, respect and other like cultural signifiers always have their locus with respect to bodily actions that one performs. Ashtavakra mentions that the moment one stops to self-identify with any of these cultural signifiers, it is equivalent to not identifying with your own body. This does not mean that Ashtavakra is insinuating the discarding of our bodies and elevating the mind (and the self) as the most unique entity. On the contrary, it is further clarification that we are just that - organic collections of cells that constitute sentience along with the ocean of other sentient beings that populate this universe.

NOTES:
*Anthropocentrism is that philosophical viewpoint that argues that human beings are at the apex of all creatures and are the single most significant entities in the world. This is a fundamental acceptance embedded within many non-Eastern religions and philosophies. Anthropocentrism regards humans as separate from and superior to nature and holds that human life has intrinsic value while other entities (including animals, plants, mineral resources, and so on). As such, such resources may justifiably be exploited for the benefit of humankind to the detriment of all other sentient beings on earth. I would consider that we are in an advanced state of chauvinistic anthropocentrism.

**I described umwelt and the concept thereof in verse 1.18. Since the concept of umwelt is critical to the understanding of the Ashtavakra Gita, I have excerpted the following writeup that defines the concept by David M. Eagleman Neuroscientist, Stanford University (Author, Incognito, Sum, The Brain): "In 1909, the biologist Jakob von Uexküll introduced the concept of the umwelt. He wanted a word to express a simple (but often overlooked) observation: different animals in the same ecosystem pick up on different environmental signals. In the blind and deaf world of the tick, the important signals are temperature and the odor of butyric acid. For the black ghost knifefish, it's electrical fields. For the echolocating bat, it's air-compression waves. The small subset of the world that an animal is able to detect is its umwelt. The bigger reality, whatever that might mean, is called the umgebung.
The interesting part is that each organism presumably assumes its umwelt to be the entire objective reality "out there." Why would any of us stop to think that there is more beyond what we can sense? In the movie The Truman Show, the eponymous Truman lives in a world completely constructed around him by an intrepid television producer. At one point an interviewer asks the producer, "Why do you think Truman has never come close to discovering the true nature of his world?" The producer replies, "We accept the reality of the world with which we're presented." We accept our umwelt and stop there.
To appreciate the amount that goes undetected in our lives, imagine you're a bloodhound dog. Your long nose houses two hundred million scent receptors. On the outside, your wet nostrils attract and trap scent molecules. The slits at the corners of each nostril flare out to allow more air flow as you sniff. Even your floppy ears drag along the ground and kick up scent molecules. Your world is all about olfaction. One afternoon, as you're following your master, you stop in your tracks with a revelation. What is it like to have the pitiful, impoverished nose of a human being? What can humans possibly detect when they take in a feeble little noseful of air? Do they suffer a hole where smell is supposed to be?
Obviously, we suffer no absence of smell because we accept reality as it's presented to us. Without the olfactory capabilities of a bloodhound, it rarely strikes us that things could be different. Similarly, until a child learns in school that honeybees enjoy ultraviolet signals and rattlesnakes employ infrared, it does not strike her that plenty of information is riding on channels to which we have no natural access. From my informal surveys, it is very uncommon knowledge that the part of the electromagnetic spectrum that is visible to us is less than a ten-trillionth of it.
Our unawareness of the limits of our umwelt can be seen with color blind people: until they learn that others can see hues they cannot, the thought of extra colors does not hit their radar screen. And the same goes for the congenitally blind: being sightless is not like experiencing "blackness" or "a dark hole" where vision should be. As a human is to a bloodhound dog, a blind person does not miss vision. They do not conceive of it. Electromagnetic radiation is simply not part of their umwelt.
The more science taps into these hidden channels, the more it becomes clear that our brains are tuned to detect a shockingly small fraction of the surrounding reality. Our sensorium is enough to get by in our ecosystem, but is does not approximate the larger picture.
I think it would be useful if the concept of the umwelt were embedded in the public lexicon. It neatly captures the idea of limited knowledge, of unobtainable information, and of unimagined possibilities. Consider the criticisms of policy, the assertions of dogma, the declarations of fact that you hear every day — and just imagine if all of these could be infused with the proper intellectual humility that comes from appreciating the amount unseen."