The bindu

October 21, 2026

Bindu means a drop, or a point. In a yantra it is the centre: the smallest mark in the figure and, in the tradition, the most important. The bindu is where the deity is said to reside. It is the seed from which the whole diagram unfolds, and the place the practitioner’s attention returns to at the end of the journey inward.

On paper, it is a dot.

The problem of the dot

I have spent more time thinking about this dot than about any triangle. Too large, and it becomes a circle, a shape among shapes. Too small, and it disappears. Too dark, and it reads as a hole. Too bright, and it reads as a jewel, something to look at rather than through.

Over the years I have tried:

• A drop of pure lamp black, laid in one touch with a fine brush.
• Raw gesso left unpainted, so the centre is the ground itself.
• Burnished gold, which catches the light only from certain angles.
• A single pinhole, so the bindu is literally an opening in the paper.

The pinhole is my favourite and the hardest to explain. Hung against a wall, it shows nothing. Held up to a window, the whole yantra gathers around a point of light.

Why it is left for last

In the drawing order I follow, the bindu is placed first, as the centre from which every measurement is taken, and completed last. For the whole time I am drawing, it is only a faint compass prick. Only when everything else is finished do I go back and make it visible.

There is something right about that. Everything in the figure depends on it, and nothing in the figure is it. The point is not a part of the drawing. It is the reason there is a drawing at all.