A wise man who has renounced everything moves through the world untouched by praise or blame, like the wind moving over the mountains
Pictures equanimity not as effortful restraint but as a kind of natural indifference, using wind and mountains to suggest something that moves through experience without being shaped by it.
This image closes chapter 10's treatment of renunciation with a natural-world comparison rather than an argument. Wind can move over a mountain range for centuries without eroding its own nature or being altered by what it passes over; the wise person, having renounced identification with the body and its social reception, relates to praise and blame the same way. The comparison matters because it locates equanimity not in willpower — gritting one's teeth against insults — but in a simple absence of investment, the way wind has no stake in mountains. It is the chapter's way of showing what renunciation looks like once it has actually settled, rather than while it is still being practiced.
Ashtavakra Gita
Written about in
- What the Ashtavakra Gita says about wanting to be admired
The wind image rules out willpower. Wind is not gritting its teeth against the mountain; it has no stake in it. Equanimity that still costs effort is, by this measure, not yet the thing being described.