śrī pādukā aṣṭakam

Eight verses to the guru's sandals, and it is a Shrividya text rather than a devotional one: what is taken refuge in is not a pair of shoes but the two padukas understood as the seat of the teaching. Each verse closes on the same line, at dawn, in the mind, I take refuge in the guru's two sandals — so the practice named is mental and is fixed to a time of day. What is said about them is metaphysical throughout: they are made of nada and bindu and kala, sounded by the ten sounds, of five colours, unbroken, the first cause; they are a net of sound and the wheel-king itself, arisen at the unstruck sound and of the colour of cloud. One verse calls them the form of intelligence, unbound, dwelling at the summit of the three. The sandals are the mantra, described as an object.