The Avadhuta Gita, attributed to Dattatreya, is awesome. Beside The Ashtavakra Samhita, it stands as a stunningly direct pointer to our true nature.

One of the common teaching tools employed is to undercut any possibility of duality–that is, any attempt by the mind to conceptualize. In this regard, it resembles the best Zen teaching.

Let’s look very closely at I.23:

How [asks the teacher Avadhuta of his student] can a man attain samadhi as long as he thinks of himself as something other than the Atman? But, on the other hand, samadhi is not possible for a man who thinks of himself as the Atman. How can samadhi be attained as long as a man thinks that Atman exists and yet does not exist? And what need is there to attain samadhi if all are one and by nature free?

We need to take this brilliant teaching line by line:

I. The first line tells us that so long as one takes the Supreme Self to be different from himself, just so long will directly knowing the Supreme Self be impossible. This cuts straight through the very idea of practice: if you think you are a practitioner whose goal is to wake up, you’re already on the wrong track, as it were. One needs to go, right now, is the very thought of separation, of otherness.

Some direct pointings:

• How many selves are there in direct experience? Are there ever two? (One–or, since uncountable, “not even one.”)
• In direct experience, can you find any division or distinction right now? (No.)
• How far do you need to go in order to be yourself? (No distance!)
• In direct experience, how long does being yourself last? (No time!)
• And so on.

II. The second line brings out three possible confusions: “But, on the other hand, samadhi is not possible for a man who thinks of himself as the Atman.” First, one is not to think, since thinking is dualistic. (But one is not also to forcefully refuse thinking-arising.) Second, it’s not that the Atman is somehow reduced to the jiva. It’s that there is no jiva in the first place–so how could one retain a sense of a separate self that was somehow Atman? Third, there aren’t two in the first place such that they could “be one” or “the same.”

Some direct pointings:

• What are you if you’re neither finite nor infinite?
• In the thought, “I am the Atman,” where is the ego I? And what is it?
• When there aren’t two in the first place, how can they be “the same?”

III. I draw inspiration from Rupert Spira in my reading of this third line: “How can samadhi be attained as long as a man thinks that Atman exists and yet does not exist?” For Spira, the term “exists” comes from the Latin “existere,” meaning to stand out or apart or come into being. Take the last meaning: how could the Atman ever come into being for coming into being implies that it was not already in, or as, being. Which is absurd. Atman neither exists nor does not exist because “being is.”

I touch on this theme at greater length in this video essay on Parmenides:

Some direct pointings:

• Have I ever experienced myself appearing or disappearing?
• How long does being last?
• When there are no thoughts, what remains?

IV. The last line so beautifully undercuts all the rest: “And what need is there to attain samadhi if all are one and by nature free?” In other words, why even bother with samadhi since it’s only a state anyway and, moreover, since your true nature is beyond all states? Just drop the thought “I am in bondage” and the thought “I must be free.”

Who can attain what when there’s not a thing to attain? If what you are is beyond samadhi, then what “need” is there to begin with?

In Sum

• You are never different from the Self.
• You and the Self, apparently two, don’t become the same.
• The Self never came into being and thus cannot possibly go out of being.
• There is no such thing, ultimately, as samadhi. What you are is here already, now already, without stain, and cannot be attained or realized. How can you attain what you already are?