Avadhuta Gita of Dattatreya (two translations available)
The Avadhuta Gita, ascribed to the sage Dattatreya, is a Vedanta text that represents "extreme" Advaita. An Avadhuta is one who has shaken off all worldly attachments and has attained a spiritual state equivalent to the existence of God. The text is a small book of eight chapters, which breathes the atmosphere of the highest experience of Brahman. This is not a philosophical treatise establishing the tenets of Advaita, but gives expression to its highest conclusions, as realized in the life of the great sage.
Swami Ashokananda, now deceased, was one of the spiritual giants of the Ramakrishna Order and the minister-in-charge of the Vedanta Society of Northern California, San Francisco, has transliterated and translated the text. The translation by Swami Chetanananda is also very good, and perhaps easier reading.
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Avadhuta Gita of DATTATREYA
09/29/2026
As a child, did you ever lay on the ground looking up into the sky?
This book, Avadhuta Gita of Dattatreya, translated by Swami Ashokananda is much like that experience.
The sky appears as one homogeneous existence in which a variety of images appear and disappear, and after a short period of time never leaving a trace that they were ever there. Only the sky remains. No duality or nonduality, just pure awareness of the sky, within and without.
As the book itself says in Chapter 1, verse 38 - "When all these appear to you as false, when the body and so on appears to you like space, then you know Brahman truly, then for you there is no dual series."
If you're ready to see with a child's pure sense of awareness again, then this book, by the grace of God alone is for you.
Price: $6.95
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As a child, did you ever lay on the ground looking up into the sky?
This book, Avadhuta Gita of Dattatreya, translated by Swami Ashokananda is much like that experience.
The sky appears as one homogeneous existence in which a variety of images appear and disappear, and after a short period of time never leaving a trace that they were ever there. Only the sky remains. No duality or nonduality, just pure awareness of the sky, within and without.
As the book itself says in Chapter 1, verse 38 - "When all these appear to you as false, when the body and so on appears to you like space, then you know Brahman truly, then for you there is no dual series."
If you're ready to see with a child's pure sense of awareness again, then this book, by the grace of God alone is for you.