The Concept of Bindu

A vedic text the Ratna-Triya-Parīkṣā [shlöka (70-71)] explains :Ratna-Triya-Pariksabindu is ‘universally understood’ – samākhyāto as
(1) ‘essence of speech’ – śabdatattvamghöṣā ( ghösah also means the ‘conchshell’)
(2) ‘word Brahma’ – vāgbrahma
(3) ‘the stable point of the Kundalini ’ – kundalinī dhruvam˙ ( dhruvah is also the name given to the ‘north star’ – the unchanging reference of the night sky )
(4) ‘power of all conscious knowledge’ – vidyā shaktih
(5) ‘the other aspect of all sound – that is – complete silence’ – parā nāda
(6) ‘this great māyā that surrounds us’ – mahāmāyti deśikaih ( deśikaih connotes spatial immediacy )
(7) ‘the unspoilt void’ – vyöman anāhatam˙

You can probably get a feel for the limitation of expression in trying to explain a transcendental concept like bindu . But whatever the level of difficulty the attempt should be made and this is exactly what the shlöka above has done. In the Vth movement of ‘Burnt Norton’ Eliot accomplishes the same feat :

                                                     “Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.”

The reader must note the sentence ‘The stillness, as a Chinese jar still / moves perpetually in its stillness’. The metaphor of the ‘Chinese jar’ is brilliant because this takes us to the external essence of bindu, which is the ensconcing of dimensions.