Shiva that which is not

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Covaxin Latest Venkatesh Iyer wants to contribute with bat and ball against NZ, says excited to work with Rahul Dravid Retail inflation rises marginally to 4. Light is a limited happening in the sense that any source of light — whether a light bulb or the sun — will eventually lose its ability to give out light.

Light is not eternal. It is always a limited possibility because it happens and it ends. Darkness is a much bigger possibility than light. Nothing needs to burn, it is always — it is eternal.

Darkness is everywhere. It is the only thing that is all pervading. In fact, in some places in the West it is being propagated that Shiva is a demon! This was known? Almost every peasant in India knows about it unconsciously. He talks about it without even knowing the science behind it.

Yoga does not mean standing on your head or holding your breath. Yoga is the science and technology to know the essential nature of how this life is created and how it can be taken to its ultimate possibility. This first transmission of yogic sciences happened on the banks of Kanti Sarovar, a glacial lake a few miles beyond Kedarnath in the Himalayas, where Adiyogi began a systematic exposition of this inner technology to his first seven disciples, celebrated today as the Sapta Rishis.

This predates all religion. Before people devised divisive ways of fracturing humanity to a point where it seems almost impossible to fix, the most powerful tools necessary to raise human consciousness were realized and propagated. This being, who is a yogi, and that non-being, which is the basis of the existence, are the same, because to call someone a yogi means he has experienced the existence as himself. If you have to contain the existence within you even for a moment as an experience, you have to be that nothingness.

Only nothingness can hold everything. Something can never hold everything. A vessel cannot hold an ocean. This planet can hold an ocean, but it cannot hold the solar system. The solar system can hold these few planets and the sun, but it cannot hold the rest of the galaxy. If you go progressively like this, ultimately you will see it is only nothingness that can hold everything. That means, at least for one moment, he has been absolute nothingness.

Because India is a dialectical culture, we shift from this to that and that to this effortlessly. One moment we talk about Shiva as the ultimate, the next moment we talk about Shiva as the man who gave us this whole process of yoga. Unfortunately, most people today have been introduced to Shiva only through Indian calendar art.

They have made him a chubby-cheeked, blue-colored man because the calendar artist has only one face. If you ask for Krishna, he will put a flute in his hand.

If you ask for Rama, he will put a bow in his hand. Every time I see these calendars, I always decide to never ever sit in front of a painter. Photographs are all right — they capture you whichever way you are. If you look like a devil, you look like a devil. Why would a yogi like Shiva look chubby-cheeked? Daksha, however, was not amused. He expected the same reverence from Shiva that he received from the other gods. At that moment, he swore never to invite Shiva to any yagna.

He deemed Shiva, the outsider, unfit for prayer, praise or sacrifice. Members of the merchant classes patronised these monastic ideologies. Threatening even the Buddhists and the Jains was the idea of an all-powerful personal godhead that was slowly taking shape in the popular imagination. The common man always found more comfort in tangible stories and rituals that made trees, rivers, mountains, heroes, sages, alchemists and ascetics worthy of worship.

The move from many guardian deities and fertility spirits to one all-powerful uniting deity was but a small step. Being atheistic, or at least agnostic, Buddhism and Jainism could do nothing more than tolerate this fascination for theism on their fringes.

In a desperate bid to survive, Vedic priests, the Brahmins, did something more: they consciously assimilated the trend into the Vedic fold. In their speculation they concluded and advertised the idea that godhead was nothing but the embodiment of brahman, the mystic force invoked by the chanting of Vedic hymns and the performance of Vedic rituals.

Adoration of this godhead through pooja, a rite that involved offering food, water, flowers, lamp and incense, was no different from the yagna. Vedanta metaphysics was allegorised so that paramatma was not just an abstract concept; it was personified in godhead. In the Shvetavastra Upanishad, Shiva is without doubt Brahman, the cosmic consciousness. With this association, Vedism transformed into what is now known as classical Hinduism.

It was a transformation that ensured that Vedic ideology survived the Buddhist and Jain onslaught. The Vedic gods, such as Indra and Agni, were sidelined. All attention was given to Shiva and Vishnu, forms of godhead, whose story was told and retold and finally compiled in Sanskrit chronicles known as the Puranas.

The middle ages saw great rivalry between Shiva-worshippers and Vishnu-worshippers. The theme is reversed in the Vishnu Purana and the Matysa Purana.

So great was the rivalry that Vishnu-worshippers wore vertical caste marks while Shiva-worshippers wore horizontal caste marks; Vishnu-worshippers painted their house with vertical strokes while Shiva-worshippers painted their houses with horizontal strokes; Vishnu-worshippers kept the Tulsi in their house while Shiva-worshippers kept the Bilva plant. People who worshipped Vishnu refused to marry or dine with those who worshipped Shiva. There were, of course, many attempts at reconciliation such as the cult of Hari-Hara, the simultaneous worship of Vishnu and Shiva, that become popular around the fifteenth century.

Even the sixteenth-century classic, Tulsi Ramayana, makes an overt attempt to show that Shiva and Vishnu are one and the same Godhead that cares for humanity. Today, the rivalry between Shiva-worshippers and Vishnu-worshippers is not very evident except perhaps in the temple complexes of Tamil Nadu and in the traditions of the Iyers and the Iyengars.

The concept of Shiva constructed by sacred stories, symbols and rituals is quite different from the idea of Vishnu. Shiva is always a reluctant groom whom the goddess has to force into marriage. Vishnu, on the other hand, is surrounded by women. As Rama, he protects them. As Krishna, he flirts with them.

While Shiva is associated with snow-capped mountains and caves and crematoriums, Vishnu is associated with meadows and rivers and battlefields. Whereas Shiva surrounds himself with dogs, bulls, ashes, skulls, animal skins and narcotics, Vishnu is found amid cows, horses, silks, flowers, pearls, gold and sandal paste.

Shiva does not want to be part of society; Vishnu, on the other hand, establishes the code of conduct for society. In temples, Vishnu is visualised as a king.