Shiva to Shankara: Giving Form to the Formless by Devdutt Pattanaik

Author:Devdutt Pattanaik
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: null
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers India
Published: 2017-04-09T18:30:00+00:00

Shiva had no interest in the cycle of renewal. He was blissfully immersed in tapasya when Chandra took refuge on his head and when Shukra passed through his body. The benefits that the two deities derived from their contact with Shiva were purely incidental. Shiva remained an indifferent outsider. If anything, Shiva opposed the fertility cycle.

To Shiva, the unending transformations of nature brought anticipation and frustration with unfailing regularity. They reminded him of the joy he felt when Sati danced on his lap and the misery he experienced when he held her corpse in his arms. To him, the world was merely a matrix of delusions that took the mind away from the state of sat-chitta-ananda. So he severed all association with the material world, shut his eyes, withdrew into cold, dark caves and meditated on sterile snow-clad mountains, warming himself with the inner fire of tapas.

When Shiva opened his third eye and destroyed the love god Kandarpa, it was clear to the gods, and to the Goddess, that Shiva was no ordinary ascetic who could be seduced. He had to be forced to abandon his ascetic ways through a display of unshakable resolve and absolute devotion. So the Goddess decided to make Shiva open his eyes, not as a nymph, but as a hermit.

According to Hindu metaphysics, since all creatures—animate and inanimate, temporal and divine—are linked by karma, it is possible to change the course of life by introducing one’s desire into the cosmos. Desire has to be introduced with stubbornness until the cosmos has no choice but to yield and give in to one’s wishes. This is hatha yoga or the yoga of unshakable resolve. Unshakable resolve was expressed through acts of austerity and self-mortification. It was not mere meditation or contemplation. Sometimes it involved giving up food, sleep and comforts, and sometimes, outright torture—sitting on fire, sleeping on thorns, or standing on one foot with upraised arms.

Parvati’s actions are different from Shiva’s. Shiva’s meditation is an expression of indifference to worldly life; her austerities are an expression of her determination to have her way. He lights the inner fire, one that burns everything around. Parvati uses the accumulated energy to force an event around her. She creates a stimulus to which Shiva has no choice but to respond. It is not a stimulus that enchants Shiva. It is a stimulus that demands his attention.

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