When he does not consider something as a difficulty, then it does not exist for him; freeing himself from inverted perception, the man becomes stable in himself.

This verse encapsulates the radical stance of practical advaita: kaṣṭa (difficulty) is not intrinsic to the event itself but is attributed by viparyaya (inverted perception). The phrase “does not consider something a difficulty” is not a denial of pain, but a recognition that the meaning of pain is constructed. The child who falls and cries suffers not from the scraped knee but from the shock of a treacherous world; the adult who trips over the same stone may laugh. The difference is not in the stone. Viparyaya-vimokṣa — liberation from inverted perception — is not denial but clarification: to see the event as an event, without the interpretive layer of “this should not be happening.” The svasthika — one who is established in oneself — derives from sva-stha, to abide in one’s own nature. It is not rigid stability but an adaptive one: the tree that bends with the wind remains rooted in itself. Aṣṭāvakra Gītā I.2 is a precise echo: “If you believe you are free, you are free; if you believe you are bound, you are bound.” This belief is not wishful thinking; it is the very structure of experience.