ശ്രീ ഗുരുമൂര്തി സ്തോത്രമ്

Ten verses to Shiva as the Guru form, every one ending on the same line: him, the Guru-form, I contemplate without ceasing. It is the companion of the Gurumurti Mangala beside it and takes the same figure at Arunachala, but plainly, without that hymn's buried acrostic. What it gathers instead is the teaching aspect. He sits with Sanaka and the others about him, one hand held out in the gesture that grants freedom from fear; he lives in the banyan grove, the moon in his matted hair, first and unborn; he is both the one whom austerity calls and the one who gives austerity its strength. The ninth verse puts him on the silver mountain, bright with ash, the good medicine for the disease of being born, having already reduced Kama to ash. The last sets Ambika beside him, his feet praised by Hari and by the one born from the lotus.