Ashtavakra Gita

Whether the body performs actions or remains still, the wise man abides in his own greatness, undisturbed either way

Removes the last apparent condition for peace — whether or not the body happens to be busy — by locating the sage's stability somewhere action can't reach.

Having described his own path from action to stillness, Janaka's account in chapter 12 goes on to note that the distinction between an active and a still body stopped mattering to him afterward. This is an important qualification: the text is not recommending literal physical inactivity as the goal, since a body doing nothing is still just another state that could be clung to. Instead, abiding in one's own greatness describes a stability that does not depend on which state the body currently happens to be in. The teaching quietly closes off the possibility of turning stillness itself into a new form of bondage.

Ashtavakra Gita

Written about in

• What the Ashtavakra Gita says about illness and the body failing

  Read this against any temptation to make stillness itself the achievement. A body doing nothing is just another state that can be clung to; the stability described is indifferent to whether you are working or bedbound.