Dakṣiṇāmūrti

Dakṣiṇāmūrti is Śiva as the teacher of teachers, the ādi guru. He is shown young, seated at ease under a banyan tree, one foot resting on the small figure of Apasmāra, forgetfulness. His name says that he faces south. South is the direction of Yama, of death, which everyone turns away from; the teacher sits facing it, and those who come to him turn their backs on death.

The story behind the image is short. The four mind-born sons of Brahmā — Sanaka, Sanandana, Sanātana and Sanatkumāra — had learnt everything that could be learnt and still were not at peace. They came to Śiva and found a youth sitting in silence under the tree. He said nothing. He only held his hand in cin-mudrā, and as they sat with him their doubts fell away. A well-known verse in his praise marvels at the scene: the disciples are old and the teacher young; the teacher's explanation is silence, and yet the disciples' doubts are cut.

The hand-sign is the heart of the form. The forefinger, which points at things and says “that”, stands for the individual self; the thumb, which stands apart from the other fingers, for the Absolute. The forefinger leaves the three fingers beside it — read as the three qualities of nature, or as waking, dream and deep sleep — and bends to touch the thumb in an unbroken ring. The book, the rosary and the fire in his other hands are the study, the practice and the burning-away that lead to the same ring.

Ādi Śaṅkarācārya's hymn, the Dakṣiṇāmūrti Stotram, makes this form the teacher of non-duality: the whole world, it says, is like a city seen in a mirror, appearing outside yet lying within, and the guru is the one who shows you the Self that was always there. In the Śiva Purāṇa the form appears as a mantra — among the five mantras that Viṣṇu receives at the beginning of creation is the Dakṣiṇāmūrti mantra.

In South Indian temples Dakṣiṇāmūrti has a fixed place: a niche on the south wall of the sanctum, facing south, where worshippers meet him as they walk around the shrine. Students pray to him before study and examinations, and many devotees visit him on Thursdays, the guru's day. Above all he is approached in quiet — the form itself asks less for words than for attention.