Symbolic image of a wandering naked sage at the edge of a forest under a starlit sky, contemplative and unadorned, deep blue and warm amber palette, painterly style Imagen 4
Advaita Vedanta · classical text

Avadhuta Gita

The song of the avadhuta, attributed to Dattatreya

Translator: Hari Prasad Shastri (1882–1956), 1934.

Source: Internet Archive

Licence: Free distribution. Shanti Sadan free-distribution policy. UK life+70 PD from 2027.

The song of the avadhuta, the one beyond all categories. Pure recognition without instruction. A text that speaks from realisation rather than toward it, attributed to Dattatreya, the wandering sage who renounced even renunciation.

From the text

The Avadhuta Gita is among the most direct of all nondual texts. Where most teaching texts build a method, the Avadhuta Gita simply declares. There is no graduated path here, no scaffolding, no accommodation for the seeker. The text speaks as the awakened do: from what is, not toward it.

Avadhuta names the one who has cast off all distinctions, including the distinction between renunciation and worldly life. Dattatreya, the figure to whom this text is attributed, is the patron of all who have gone beyond categories. He is depicted with the dog of forgotten origins and the cow of natural mind, beyond caste and beyond order, naked or clothed without preference.

Chapter one

1.1

By the grace of God alone the desire for nonduality arises in wise people, to save them from great fear.

1.2

The Self pervades all this universe. Pure, beyond happiness and misery, is the One Self. How shall I worship that?

1.3

The five elements compose the universe like the water of a mirage. To whom shall I bow? I am the One pure consciousness.

[ A representative selection. The avadhuta continues across eight short chapters, each more uncompromising than the last. The complete Shastri 1934 edition is at the source linked above. ]