Tatpada

The word, and what it points to.

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A forest hermitage at sunset: an elderly teacher with a white beard sits cross-legged on a low earth platform beneath an enormous banyan, a palm-leaf manuscript open on his knee and one hand raised mid-sentence, with five students seated on the ground around him — a boy leaning on his hand, an older man in ochre listening, others with their backs to us. A brick fire-altar burns at the left beside a copper vessel, a thatched hut stands among the roots, and beyond the tree a river bends away toward low hills and the setting sun, with cattle and a deer at the edges.Philosophy & Practice81 textsAruṇācala at sunset: a single broad rocky hill rising from a dry plain, its western face lit gold and its lower slopes in shadow, the sun going down at the right. In the near left, seated on a flat rock beneath a thorn tree with his back to us, a solitary figure in plain white cloth, entirely still, facing the hill. A footpath runs past him into the scrub; palmyras and low green thorn stand across the plain, and two white egrets cross low over it.Direct Inquiry43 textsA green parakeet on a branch, opening a ripe mango whose juice runs from it, above a river at golden hourDevotion & Sacred Story114 textsA lamplit granite shrine at night. The Divine Mother sits enthroned at its centre in crimson and gold silk, four-armed, wearing a tall jewelled crown, her lower right hand raised in blessing, beneath a gold arch hung with garlands of jasmine and red flowers. A golden Śrī Meru — the Śrī Chakra in its stepped, three-dimensional form — stands on the altar at her feet, with small attendant figures and rows of brass oil lamps to either side. An elderly ācārya sits on the polished stone floor at the left, seen from behind, bare-shouldered with sacred ash across his arm and his palms joined. Tall brass lamps, a conch and a tray of flowers stand at the right.The Divine Mother25 textsAn elderly guru in white robes sits cross-legged in meditation on a stone platform beneath the hanging roots of a great banyan tree at dusk, eyes closed, faintly smiling. Around him, five people kneel with hands folded in reverence: at the left, a woman, a man and a young boy in pale clothing, all looking up at him; at the right, an old man leaning on a bamboo staff, his bundle on the ground beside him, and a younger man in an ochre robe. Beyond them, a wooded hillside falls away to a river, a village of whitewashed houses, and a tiered temple gopuram, with blue mountains and a rising or setting sun beyond under a golden sky.Sacred Lives145 textsA Kashmiri river valley at first light: an elderly teacher in undyed wool sits cross-legged on a stone terrace above the water, one hand raised as he speaks, and a younger man sits below and turned toward him, listening, a brass water-vessel between them. Beyond the river, chinar trees in autumn red and amber, a scattering of village houses, mist in the folds of the hills, and a wall of snow peaks catching the first gold light.Recognition19 texts