Dakshinamurti
दक्षिणामूर्ति DakṣiṇāmūrtiShiva as the guru, the teacher: a young figure seated under a banyan, facing south, teaching aged sages through silence, one foot on the dwarf of ignorance and a hand raised in the chin mudra. Honoured as the adi-guru, the first teacher. The subject of Adi Shankara's Dakshinamurti Stotra and the minor Dakshinamurti Upanishad, which read the image as a statement of Advaita, the oneness of the self and the absolute.
Explained in depth in Dakshinamurti: Shiva as the silent guruWhere this term appears
- Who is Shiva? Deities
The same dwarf sits beneath Dakshinamurti, Shiva as the silent teacher of the south-facing wall, who rests a foot on him rather than dancing.
- What are Mudras? Lineages
It is the hand of Dakshinamurti, the form of Shiva who teaches the highest truth in silence, sitting with this seal at his knee and saying nothing at all.
- Why do so many temples face east? Temples
Shiva as the south-facing teacher, Dakshinamurti, gives his silent instruction toward the south, and some of his shrines are oriented accordingly, a southern door being said in one Agama to "make for liberation…
- Four in the Morning Treatise
…that there are at least three classical sampradayas - Anandabhairava, Dakshinamurti, Hayagriva - and a fourth integrative line in Dattatreya, and that within each of these run further distinctions of Kaula and …
- The Fire She Came From Treatise
The other two classical sampradayas - Dakshinamurti and Anandabhairava - receive the goddess’s narrative through different teaching-frames.
- The Man Who Drew a Line Treatise
There is the Dakshinamurti sampradaya - the Samaya school, traced to Shiva in his form as Dakshinamurti, the south-facing teacher who teaches in silence.