sthirabindu · स्थिरबिन्दु

The dimensionless still point. Sanskrit sthira (steady, motionless) + bindu (point, drop, dimensionless mark).

T. S. Eliot reached toward the same thing in Four Quartets - "the still point of the turning world" - without knowing he was translating sthirabindu.

श्रुतिविप्रतिपन्ना ते यदा स्थास्यति निश्चला । समाधावचला बुद्धिस्तदा योगमवाप्स्यसि ॥

śhruti-vipratipannā - not allured by the fruitive sections of the Vedas; te - your; yadā - when; sthāsyati - remains; niśhchalā - steadfast; samādhau - in divine consciousness; achalā - steadfast; buddhiḥ - intellect; tadā - at that time; yogam - Yog; avāpsyasi - you will attain.

"Centre itself is my central teaching."

Someone once asked Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi, "What is your central teaching?" The Sage said, "Centre itself is my central teaching."

Delusion, thoughts, toil, pleasure, pain, and suffering are the forces that mill around. The centre is harmony; the circumference is turbulence.

- Srimad Bhagavad Gita: Elixir of Eternal Wisdom, Vol. 1

"We dance round in a ring and suppose, / But the Secret sits in the middle and knows."

The whole poem. Two lines. First published in A Further Range (1936), collected in The Poetry of Robert Frost.

The verb suppose is exact: sub-pono, to place-over - the overlay of the unreal upon the real. Śaṅkara's adhyāsa. The Secret at the centre, capitalized and personified, sits and knows: sākṣin, the witness.

At the still point of the turning world

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, but neither arrest nor movement. Except for the point, the still point, there would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

Eliot studied Sanskrit at Harvard under Charles Lanman and read the Upaniṣads in the original. The Waste Land (1922) closes with a passage from the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad followed by śāntiḥ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ. The still point is not Christian imagery in poetic dress - it is sthirabindu, arriving in English through a man who had genuinely sat with the Upaniṣads.

"Stillness is not a state; it is an inner place."

I discover that stillness is not a state; it is an inner place. Like a hub at the center of a wheel, it accommodates quietude and movement with equal ease. In itself it has nothing to do with either quietude or movement. How does it participate in the phenomenal world? This is a mystery.

Stillness is the place where the phenomenal and noumenal worlds interface. It is the opening through which subtle vibrations can reach us, and so reach the phenomenal world. Remembering oneself is the act of creating and maintaining this opening.

- Shimon Malin (theoretical physicist and long-time student of Gurdjieff work)

וְלָא תַּחְלָן לְנֶסְיוּנָא - Wela tahlan l'nesyuna

Usually rendered "lead us not into temptation." The Aramaic reaches further. Nesyuna - from the Semitic root n-s-y, to test, probe, try by ordeal - is not an external seducer offering something pleasant. It names the experience of being destabilized, of losing one's centre, of being shaken from the ground of one's being into confusion and agitation.

Do not let us enter into anything that causes us inner vacillation or agitation from our true purpose.

Vedāntically this is vikṣepa - the projecting power of māyā, the scattering of attention away from the Self - and vibhrama, wandering. The prayer is asking not to be scattered from the centre.

Being (the hub) is always well (su-asti); the arms never leave it.

The whole symbol is a yantra - a geometric embodiment of the teaching: being (the centre) is always su-asti (well), and all manifestation (the four arms) moves within being without ever leaving it. The arms never disconnect from the hub. Ornaments never leave gold. Waves never leave the ocean. The svastika is this drawn in space.

"First find the immutable centre where all movement takes birth."

The flower fills the space with perfume, the candle with light. They do nothing yet they change everything by their mere presence. You can photograph the candle, but not its light. You can know the man, his name and appearance, but not his influence.

Everybody wants to be active, but where do his actions originate? There is no central point - each action begets another, meaninglessly and painfully, in endless succession. The alternation of work and pause is not there. First find the immutable centre where all movement takes birth. Just like a wheel turns round an axle, so must you be always at the axle in the centre and not whirling at the periphery.

- I Am That, Ch. 72: What is Pure, Unalloyed, Unattached is Real

"I trusted my Guru."

No way to Self-realization is short or long, but some people are more earnest and some are less. I was a simple man, but I trusted my Guru. He told me to concentrate on 'I am' - I did. He told me that I am beyond all perceivable and conceivable - I believed. I gave him my heart and soul, my entire attention and the whole of my spare time (I had to work to keep my family alive). As a result of faith and earnest application, I realized my Self within three years.

- attributed to Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

"The one that observes the movement is almost stationary."

Questioner: It is very difficult to give up this attraction to the bodily identity.

Maharaj: You have to find out what this body is, then the job is done. Initially, the body is very minute. The consciousness appears in the body, and then the tiny body changes into a large one. That causal body, which is very minute, needs to be known. By meditation you can know it. The quality of that causal body takes on the appearance of the consciousness and the form.

In this world there are many species, in all sizes; initially what was the size of each variety?

At the point where you first feel knowingness, consciousness is not static; it is a continuous state, just like a wheel moving. The center of the wheel, the axle, is not moving. As you proceed from the center of the axle outwardly, the movement increases, does it not?

Similarly, the beginning of consciousness is like the center of a wheel; that point is steady, constant. In a human being that is the most constant principle.

Since the day I was born until I am dead, that consciousness principle is there at that center. As you merge into the world, the movement increases. Watch that center point, watch that movement of consciousness. Chaitanya and Chetana - that central, stationary point of the wheel watches the movement of consciousness. The one that observes the movement is almost stationary.

To bring about the actions of the world - the movement - consciousness must descend. If there is no consciousness, there is no worldly movement. Similarly, you must become stabilized in a more stationary position, near the center. When you leave that center point, the movement takes over.

- Consciousness and the Absolute: The Final Talks of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, edited by Jean Dunn (The Acorn Press, 1994).

The weight shifts, slowly, from the rim to the centre.

If we can imagine a wheel whose rim is the cycle of births and deaths, all of the 'stuff' of life, conditioned reality, and whose center is perfect flow, formless no-mind, the source - we've got one foot with most of our weight on the circumference of the wheel, and one foot tentatively on the center. That's the beginning of awakening.

And we come in, and we sit down and meditate, and suddenly there's a moment when we feel the perfection of our being and our connection. Then our weight goes back on the outside of the wheel. Over and over and over, this happens.

Slowly, slowly the weight shifts. Then the weight shifts just enough so that there is a slight predominance on the center of the wheel, and we find that we naturally just want to sit down and be quiet, that we don't have to say, 'I've got to meditate now,' or 'I've got to read a holy book,' or 'I've got to turn off the television set.' It doesn't become that kind of discipline anymore. The balance has shifted.

And we keep allowing our lives to become more and more simple, more and more harmonious. And less and less are we grabbing at this and pushing that away.

- Ram Dass

TO THE CENTRE OF OUR BEING

To achieve this kind of concentration where attention is withdrawn from the outer world and held tightly in itself, a determined attitude is needed of not stopping until this sharply pointed state is reached. All other thoughts are rejected in the very moment that they arise. If at the start there is aspiration and devotion toward the Overself, and in the course of the effort too, then eventually the stress falls away and the Stillness replaces it.

Every time a thought rears its head, evaluate it for what it is and then push it aside. Every time an emotion rushes up, recognize it, too, for what it is and detach yourself from it. This is the path of Self-Enquiry, for as you do these things hold the will directed towards finding the centre of your being ...

The giving up of thoughts leads to the giving up of the personal self. In his quietest moments a man hears in the depths of his being a voice which tells him that he comes from a country to which one day he must return.

- The Notebooks of Paul Brunton, 4-4-3-188, 4-4-4-50, 3-2-3-29. Available in Spanish, French, and German at paulbruntondailynote.se.

THE WAY TO PERMANENT HAPPINESS

In those moments when he touches the still centre of his being, he forgets his miseries and enjoys its happiness. This provides a clue to the correct way to find real happiness, which so many are seeking and so few are finding. It lies within.

If the mind can reach a state where it is free from its own ideas, projections, and wishes, it can reach true happiness.

Know Consciousness without its objects - and you are free!

The wise man lets the Overself's presence flow through his life, never blocks it by his ego nor turns it aside by his passions.

- The Notebooks of Paul Brunton, 15-24-1-79, 15-24-1-77, 14-22-5-66, 14-22-2-63. Available in Spanish, French, and German at paulbruntondailynote.se.

THE END OF FEAR

Both desires and fears bind a man to his ego and thus bar the way to spiritual fulfilment. They could not exist except in relation to a second thing. But when he turns his mind away from all things and directs it toward its own still centre, it is the beginning of the end for all desires and all fears.

What it is necessary for him to do is really to surrender his fears and anxieties, whether concerning himself or those near and dear to him, or those who, he thinks, want to hurt him. He should surrender all these to God and be himself rid of them. For this is what giving up the ego truly means. He would then have no need to entertain such negative thoughts. They would be replaced by a strong faith that all would be well with him. To the extent that he can give up the little ego with its desires and fears, to that extent he invites and attracts divine help in his life.

Enfolded by that inner strength, one ceases to fear, to be anxious, or to dread the future.

- The Notebooks of Paul Brunton, 5-6-4-60, 12-18-4-129, 14-22-3-158. Available in Spanish, French, and German at paulbruntondailynote.se.

"They cover and hide the still centre of one's being."

… most of one's misery is inflicted on oneself by accepting and holding negative thoughts. They cover and hide the still centre of one's being, which is infinite happiness.

- The Notebooks of Paul Brunton, 1-11-0-41 (excerpt). Audio + ES/FR/DE at paulbruntondailynote.se.

"This transparency is peace."

He feels that he is now in the very centre of his being, that he has shifted identity there. The ego no longer covers it over and occupies his whole view. Rather is it now transparent to the light radiating from this centre. This transparency is peace.

- The Notebooks of Paul Brunton, 15-24-4-41. Available in Spanish, French, and German at paulbruntondailynote.se.

"Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness."

- Meister Eckhart, from the Sermons and Treatises (widely attributed; often cited in translations by Raymond Bernard Blakney and Edmund Colledge & Bernard McGinn).

The vast silence that is the ground of us all

It has always been the business of the great seers - known to India as rishis, in biblical terms as "prophets," to primitive folk as shamans, and in our own day as "poets" and "artists" - to perform the work of the first and second functions of a mythology by recognizing through the veil of nature, as viewed in the science of their times, the radiance, terrible yet gentle, of the dark, unspeakable light beyond, and through their words and images to reveal the sense of the vast silence that is the ground of us all and of all beings.

- Joseph Campbell, essayed in Myths to Live By and The Inner Reaches of Outer Space.

"Stillness is vital to the world of the soul."

Stillness is vital to the world of the soul. If as you age you become more still, you will discover that stillness can be a great companion. The fragments of your life will have time to unify, and the places where your soul-shelter is wounded or broken will have time to knit and heal. You will be able to return to yourself. In this stillness, you will engage your soul.

Many people miss out on themselves completely as they journey through life. They know others, they know places, they know skills, they know their work, but tragically, they do not know themselves at all.

Aging can be a time of ripening when you actually meet yourself, indeed maybe for the first time. There are beautiful lines from T. S. Eliot that say:

"And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time."

- John O'Donohue, Anam Ċara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom (1997). The Eliot lines are from Little Gidding, the fourth of the Four Quartets.

The optical delusion of consciousness

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us the Universe - a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.

This delusion is a kind of prison, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

- Albert Einstein, from a condolence letter to Robert S. Marcus (12 February 1950), published widely in The New York Post (28 November 1972) and elsewhere.

What these three say together

Yellow · pīta - in Vedāntic terms, sāttvika par excellence. Yellow is the colour of jñāna (knowledge that illuminates) and buddhi (the refined intellect capable of receiving the teaching). Kṛṣṇa wears yellow - pītāmbara, the yellow-robed one - signalling that the Lord is himself jñāna-svarūpa, knowledge in its own form. Turmeric (haridrā) is yellow; it purifies and blesses simultaneously, mapping onto the double function of viveka: it discriminates and thereby purifies.

Green · harita - the colour of prakṛti at her most benign: nature as Īśvara's creative expression, abundant and self-renewing. In the guṇa framework it sits between tamas (inertia, dark) and rajas (energy, red-orange) - vitality without agitation, sāttvika in a grounded, earthy sense. Some deities associated with healing and nature - including forms of Viṣṇu and the goddess Mīnākṣī - are depicted with green complexion. On the gopuram it signals the living, thriving, present-moment nature of māyā as śakti - not illusion to be overcome, but life to be honoured as the Lord's own creative play (līlā).

Purple · nīlavarna / rakta-nīla - purple is not a primary category in classical Hindu iconography the way red, saffron, yellow, blue, white, and green are; historically natural purple dye was rare in South Asia. Where it appears, it sits between nīla (blue, infinite, consciousness, depth) and rakta (red, śakti, energy, transformation) - the union of the two, pointing toward a quality simultaneously transcendent and active. Some iconographers associate it with Ardhanārīśvara - the half-Śiva, half-Śakti form - where the masculine transcendent and the feminine creative are literally one body. In the cakra framework, purple is associated with ājñā and sahasrāra - the centres of insight and transcendent awareness.

Together on the gopuram these three say: reality is not one-dimensional. Yellow proclaims jñāna - the luminosity of knowledge. Green proclaims śakti as life, nature, the generative ground. Purple suggests the mystery of that which is both infinite and active, both Śiva and Śakti, both witness and world. The polychrome tower is not decoration on the way to the truth - it is the truth, seen from the outside. The silent gold inner sanctum is the same truth seen from the inside.

nirbīja samādhi · निर्बीज समाधि

nir - without · bīja - seed · samādhi - absorption. "Seedless absorption." Patañjali's term (Yoga Sūtras 1.51) for the ultimate meditative state - the absorption in which even the seeds of thought, of subtle impression (saṃskāra), of the sense of a meditator, are gone. Its counterpart, sabīja samādhi ("with seed"), still has an object of attention - a form, a mantra, a felt sense of "I am concentrating on X." Nirbīja has none of that. No object. No knower. No knowing.

This is why a still centre and no centre end up saying the same thing.

A centre implies a periphery - a something to be central to. That is sabīja - a centre with a seed, a centre that is one term of a pair. So long as centre / circumference is the framing, the centre is still a thing among things, still located, still describable. Not the referent the tradition is pointing at.

No centre pushes back the other way - refuses the pair, refuses location, refuses even the pointing. That is nirbīja - beyond the seed of any distinction, including the distinction between centre and no-centre.

The referent is neither of them and both of them. It is that which is and isn't - beyond vyakta (manifest) and avyakta (unmanifest), beyond sat (being) and asat (non-being), beyond śūnya (empty) and pūrṇa (full). Every Upaniṣadic neti neti is pointing at this: not this, not this - and also not the pointing.

Sthirabindu - the still point - is a device, a upāya, a way to stop the wheel long enough for the illusion of being on the wheel to become obvious. Once obvious, the point drops too. What remains is what has been there the whole time, under no name.