1.
A patched rag from the roadside serves as a shawl
To the Avadhut, who has no sense of pride or shame.
Naked, he sits in an empty shack,
Immersed in the pure, stainless bliss of the Self.
2.
His attainment is beyond attaining or non-attaining;
His state is beyond that of union or separation;
He’s continually established in the one stainless Reality.
How can the Avadhut either speak or not speak?
3.
Free from bondage to the fetters of hope,
Free from the yoke of acceptable conduct,
Free from everything, he’s thus attained peace.
He is the stainless One, the pure Absolute.
4.
For him, where is the question of being embodied or
bodiless?
Where is the question of attachment or non- attachment?
Pure and unpartitioned as the infinite sky,
He is, Himself, the Reality in Its natural form.
5.
Where the Self is, how can there be any knowledge?
How can there be either forms or the absence of forms?
Where there is the Supreme, infinite as the sky,
How can there be any differentiation of objects?
6.
The Self is undifferentiated, like the formless sky;
The Self is the pure and stainless Reality.
For Him, how can there be difference or non-difference,
Bondage or liberation, division or change?
7.
There is but one Reality: the undifferentiated All.
How, then, could there be union, separation, or pride of attainment here?
He is the Supreme, the undifferentiated All;
Here, how could there be any substance or nonsubstance?
8.
Only the stainless, all-inclusive Reality exists;
It is a clear, pure, and continuous Sky.
Here, how could association or dissociation occur?
In the one Reality, how could there be any relationship or severance of relationship?
9.
As a yogi, he is beyond union and separation;
As a bhogi (enjoyer), he is beyond enjoyment and non-enjoyment.
Thus, he wanders leisurely, leisurely,
While in his mind arises the natural bliss of the Self.
10.
How does one who is continuously bound here by knowledge and ignorance
Become free of both duality and non-duality?
How does a yogi here become natural and desireless?
By becoming aware that he’s the stainless Purity, the enjoyer of unchanging bliss.
11.
The Destroyer is beyond destruction and non-destruction;
The Sustainer is beyond sustaining and non- sustaining.
Indeed, how could substance or the dissolution of substance exist here?
The Reality is unchanging, like the formless sky.
12.
Continuously united with, yet free from, everything,
The liberated are beyond all manifestation (tattvas).
Indeed, how could there be any birth or death here?
How can one here meditate on either forms or formlessness?
13.
All this [world] is conjured by magic;
It’s only the water of a desert mirage.
Beyond all differences, beyond all forms,
Truly, there is only Shiva alone.
14.
We’re completely oblivious to everything—
From the performance of duties to the attainment of liberation.
How, then, could those who profess wisdom imagine
That we possess either attachment or non-attachment?
15.
In that state where one knows nothing at all,
This versified knowledge doesn’t even exist.
So, now, while I’m in the state of samarasa,
I, the Avadhut, have spoken of the supreme Absolute.