What is an Avadhuta?
My Guruji’s Guru was an avadhuta. She was Mayi Amma, which you can google and see many images of a mostly naked older looking woman, near or in the ocean and surrounded by dogs. She lived in and around Kanyakumari at the southern most tip of India but was believed to have been from the Northeast based on her looks. Likely Assam or Nagaland, but nobody really knows. She never answered this question when asked. She did what She wanted and lived as She was moved to, day in and day out for over 700 years. Nobody knows how long, and it was probably even longer than that because She said Her Guru was Goraknath, who lived quite a long, long time ago. Her picture is attached.
Dattatreya was the original Avadhuta, and even is credited with writing the Avadhuta Gita, a beautiful work of prose telling how this and that are all not requirements in life. He also never had a Guru himself in human form, but in all nature around him listed as 26 tattvas, all of which can be googled if you’re interested.
He as well is the father of Aghora, the path of Avadhutas, even though most in India would not call them that. They would more likely call them crazy, and some of them are, but the thing is that they don’t really care what you or society as a whole think of them. They are healers and help a lot of people, but have no concern with the modern ideas of how one is to present themselves in this lifetime. So they come around naked very often, or covered in ashes, or live in the smashān and seem to do very strange things. Though the only folks who know or understand their medicine are they themselves. Even those whom they have healed don’t understand how it works.
They have mantras that no one else has, and ideas of how to use ash, or rudraksha seeds, or even feces and urine, in ways that nobody would believe could work as a healing agent, but always does work. So Mayi Amma was from an Aghori parampara/sampradaya. Goraknath and his teacher Matsyendranath were accredited in the Aghora tradition also, and being or becoming an Avadhuta is definitely part of this path and the path of Tantra.
I believe all the teachings that can be learned in Tantra are meant to free you from all ideas of attachment to things in life. So if you’ve received diksha in a mantra it is meant for this. Or trained in a pooja, it is meant for this. The problem is that sometimes we get very entangled in the “things” we learned and doing them, rather than the effect they are meant to have. So can get more and more attached.
I myself will say I am still attached, although I’m far less than I used to be. I’m not ready to have nothing and nowhere to live, even though I love the idea of these things. I still have two suitcases which hold almost all the belonging I do still have, and they are not seriously needed things. A few clothes and books, my altar and the vigrahas I use once settled in a place for a short time. And all the oils I use in my hair or on my body, but also which can be purchased in different locations so aren’t terribly needed.
But the idea of freedom can be just that, an idea, or it can be real. I keep feeling myself more and more called to this type of life and may find myself in it soon enough. Even my astrologer has told me one day I’ll through my passport in the Ganga, or burn it, and just live freely. And perhaps this is so.
Are you free? Do you find yourself scared of these ideas I’ve listed above and find that thinking about them don’t make you feel free? Can you imagine what it will be like to actually be free like this? I can, and it does scare me and that is why I’m interested in it. How can freedom manifest itself in your life a little more?