purusha
पुरुष puruṣaIn Samkhya and yoga, pure consciousness, the silent witness; that which is aware but is never itself an object.
Where this term appears
- Hindu cosmology: the fourteen worlds and the ages of the universe Essentials
In the Puruṣa Sūkta (Ṛgveda 10.90) the world is offered into being rather than made.
- What is Samkhya? Philosophy
There are, it says, two ultimate kinds of reality, and they have nothing whatever in common. The first is purusha , pure consciousness.
- What Are the Yoga Sutras? Yoga
At that time the seer rests in his own unmodified state." The seer is purusha , pure awareness.
- What is Yoga? Yoga
On one side, purusha : pure consciousness, the witness, that which is aware.
- Anatomy of a Hindu Temple: Gopuram to Garbhagriha Temples
The plan is laid on a grid of squares, sixty-four or eighty-one, and that grid is understood as the body of a cosmic being, the Vastu-Purusha , pinned to the earth so the structure can rest upon him.
- Bhuta Shuddhi: The Rite That Burns the Body to Ash Lineages
This is the papa-purusha , the "man of sin": the entire weight of one's wrongdoing gathered into a single body, its very limbs made of specific transgressions.
- Ishvara, Bhagavan and Brahman: How Hinduism Conceives God Essentials
…, gives the leanest definition in the tradition: Ishvara is a special purusha , a distinct consciousness, untouched by affliction, by action, by the fruits of action, and by the buried impressions the rest of u…
- Nagara, Dravida and Vesara: The Styles of the Hindu Temple Temples
If the symbolic logic of the ground plan interests you, the companion piece on the Vastu-Purusha-Mandala explains the diagram beneath the stone.