24 gurus of Lord Dattatreya

Lord Dattatreya is powerful god for Hindus.Many people worship him. He bestows special powers and the worshippers follow a different methodology when they worship Dattatreya . In a way he is the starter of the Guru culture worship , as it exists today. He belongs to Before Christ time period but he has descended on to earth in many avatars. One of those avatars lived in India around 18th century. Dattatreya is said to be son of the trinity brahma , vishnu and Eswar. The point is, Dattatreya (Avadhuta ,means great self realized master) described that he has 24 gurus , from the mother nature and he learnt great things from these gurus, for spiritual development. In other words he suggested that we should learn these qualities from the nature around us, to grow spiritually. The 24 Gurus are:the earth, air, sky, water, fire, moon, sun, pigeon, python; the ocean, moth, honeybee, elephant, the deer, the fish, the prostitute Pingala, the kurara bird (Hawk), the child; the young girl, arrow maker, serpent, spider and the wasp. More information about why he selected these , can be obtained from here There is a very pious book which describes in detail about this dattatreya and his avatars and the book is very good and useful. This is called Guru Charitra. Devotees read this regularly and get their hearts filled with dattatreya. All the stories and incidents written in the book are very interesting and makes us well desciplined as they influence our mind very much and make us long for a guru. Thursday is very auspiciaous for all the worshippers of this Guru. We find 4 dogs sitting infront of him. It is told that these dogs are the actual vedas. Guru charitra should be read once to know more details about the gurus, and desciples and how they lived in ancient years, how dedicated they are for gurus.