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Shiv
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Tantrik influence, the lingam placed in a yoni base - which means exactly
what it sounds like - became a frank avowal of the ultimate origin of new
life, it was fertility symbolism at its best. Educated Hindus tend to be
over-apologetic about this aspect, though the average Hindu lives in a
curious innocence about the nature of the Lingam. This was typically
expressed in Gandhi's naïve confession that he had to read foreign authors
before he realized that there might be anything sexual about the lingam.
According to Swami Vivekananda, not just the lingam but also the entire
external image of Shiva is an elaborate symbolical construct. In his view,
Shiva is a personification of the entire Vedic fire sacrifice. Thus the ash
with which his body is smeared is the ash of the sacrifice. (Ash is also
what's left when everything is destroyed and it does not decay. So too with
god, what is left when everything is gone. Shiva covers himself with ash
because he is the only life form in the Universe who is aware of this truth
at every moment.) The white complexion of Shiva is indicative of the smoke
of the sacrifice. The animals He is associated with indicate the animals
tied to the sacrificial posts and so on. The Shiva linga, in Vivekananda's
view is actually a feebly recalled Yupa Stambha, the Cosmic Pillar
that is the center and support of the Universe, The Axis Mundi,
in fact. This yupa stambha is always represented in all fire sacrifices and
it is permanently installed in temples in the form of the linga.
If prayers could not be offered to images of Shiva, then the temples could
be covered with depictions of scenes from his ancient life. So great was the
Shiva factor in Indian art forms that it almost obscures the other gods. The
temples and their sculptures run riot. Khajuraho, Ellora, Elephanta,
Rameshwaram, the Chola temples, the Bhuvaneshwar and Madhya Pradesh temples,
and the great dancing Shiva temple at Chidambaram, it's a universe drunk on
the creative energy, fertile and fecund with originality and beauty that is
not as well regarded as it should be, merely because there is too much of
it. If there were only one such temple in India the world would have gone
mad with appreciation. As such, you can actually overdose on beauty, the
Beauty that is the transcendent state of the Truth that is Shiva, expressed
in the famous formulation Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram.
The mythologies surrounding Shiva are immense. It must be remembered that
the Shiva story has been going on for five thousand years now and they only
too obviously reflect the concerns of people at the time they were being
composed. Shiva Himself is a composite god today, involving many local area
gods and little tradition mythologies into his all-embracing grasp. Shiva is
more or less what you want Him to be, as in Him all contradictions casually
coexist. The notion of Shiva as exclusively a Wild Man of the forests and
mountains, traveling with a band of ghosts and ghouls as their leader,
Bhoothnath, is a recent phase of his worship. For while He was always
capable of peculiar behavior, Shiva used to live outside of society not
because He had rejected it but because He had transcended it. Shiva is
repeatedly described as the Supreme Master of all the Arts, and that
indicates a highly socialized being, the Nagarika of ancient India, not a
rustic.
To those who did not understand this aspect of the lord, to those who still
had on their defensive shell of sophistication and cynicism, Shiva was
Bholenath, the Simpleton God. Yet, traditionally India has regarded Shiva
not as any of these roles but as Vishwanatha - the Lord of the Universe.
That is why in all the old temples you find him represented as a king,
decked out in lordly robes with crowns and jewels. This homeless-wanderer
recent incarnation of Shiva was perhaps a reflection of a culture that had
lost its moorings and was reeling under alien domination.
Yet even at this much reduced level, Shiva seems to appeal the most
powerfully, of all the gods of India, to the collective unconscious. Since
most Goddess worshipers also acknowledge Him as the divine spouse of the
Goddess, Shiva may easily have the most devotes in sheer number alone. He is
laughed at as an old man by devotees with the affection that comes only with
comfort. Yet in some corner of the old limbic brain he lurks, Rudra-Shiva,
the old god of India, the source of the songs of the Rig Veda.
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