The Teacher Who Instructs in Silence

Dakshinamurti is Shiva as the supreme teacher (guru), seated beneath a banyan tree and facing south (dakshina), one foot pressing down the dwarf of ignorance and the other drawn up, surrounded by aged sages who are, in the paradox the image insists on, younger than the youthful god who teaches them. The heart of the icon is that he teaches in silence, and the silence is itself the highest instruction: the deepest knowledge, the identity of the individual self (atman) with the absolute (brahman), is held to be beyond words, so that the disciples' doubts are resolved without anything being said. His right hand forms the chin-mudra, thumb and forefinger joined in a circle, read as that very identity of self and absolute. The Dakshinamurti Stotra is traditionally ascribed to Shankara, the great Advaita philosopher, an attribution conventional rather than textually secure. In South Indian Shiva temples a niche for Dakshinamurti stands, fittingly, on the south wall.