GOD OF THE WEEK -- Shiva

This week's god is Shiva, the Hindu deity of destruction, transformation, and yoga. Shiva is brutal and beautiful. He wears a tiger skin, holds a trident, and has a cobra about his neck. His skin is smeared with ashes from the funeral pyre. He is the father of all ascetics, and as such has long, matted dreadlocks.

(Sometimes you see Shiva spelled Siva. There are many "s" sounds in Sanskrit and the word gets transliterated differently by different writers. Another confusing thing about Sanskrit is that the masculine ending is -a. In English, we are used to names ending with "a" being feminine, but the Sanskrit male names frequently end with "a" (Krishna, Shiva, Rama, Ganesha, etc.) The feminine ending is usually -i (Parvati, Lakshmi, Kali, etc.))

Unlike last week's goddess of the week, Freya, Shiva is still worshipped today. I worship him myself from time to time. Before I got into the ring in Madison Square Garden, I recited the Maha Mritunjaya Mantra:

Om Tryambakam Yajamahe
Sugandhim Pushtivardhanam
Urvarukamiva Bandhanan
Mrityor Mukshiya Maamritat
Swaha

I bow to the three-eyed one, Lord Shiva, fragrant, radiant and full of grace. As a ripe cucumber falls easily from its stem, may I be released from all my attachments, and may I achieve immortality.

I told myself, playing that game you play with yourself sometimes, "If I can get to the end of the mantra without anyone interrupting me, I will win the fight." I did, and I did.

Sometimes when I go to a party, I wish that Shiva would manifest for a moment and burn away some of the excess advertising executives. Last night, I was trapped in a conversation between two married couples in which couple A was aggressively teasing couple B because wife B had not taken husband B's name. A single woman nearby remarked, "In this day and age, I think it's normal not to take a man's name." The husband in couple A replied, "That's why you're still single."

I watched the single woman, who was a delightful person, blush bright red.

Another reason never to leave my apartment.

Shiva is often pictured dancing in a ring of flames, his foot stomping on a little dwarf who represents the ego. This is Shiva's great dance, which he will do at the end of the age. In this form he is called Nataraja, the lord of the dance. He is called by countless other names as well, Rudra, Shambhu, etc.

Shiva's consort is the beautiful Parvati. Their son is Ganesha. Ganesha was born while Shiva was away from home, and Parvati set the boy to guard the door to her bedchamber, telling him to bar all strangers from entering. When Shiva returned home, the boy would not allow him to enter his own wife's bedroom. Enraged, Shiva cut off the boy's head, killing him.

Parvati emerged from the room, weeping, and told Shiva he had killed his son. So Shiva took the first head he saw, an elephant's, and set it on the boy's shoulders. Ganesha came back to life, but ever after wore the head of the elephant.

Once a human ascetic became so fierce in his yogic practices that he ate only the bark of trees. He meditated and grew superhumanly powerful. He cut himself and saw that, as a result of his extreme austerity, sap flowed from his wound rather than blood. This made the holy man so happy that he began to dance. The dance shook the foundations of the world. The gods, in fear, sent Shiva down to earth, saying, "Calm him down, Shiva, or his dance will destroy the world."

Shiva stood calmly before the man, and asked him, "Why do you dance?"

The man said, "Look!" and pointed to the sap flowing from his wound.

Shiva regarded him through sleepy eyes. "That is nothing," Shiva said. He cut his own skin with a fingernail. White ashes flowed from the wound.

Three poems in praise of Shiva by Allama Prabhu, from the tenth century AD, tr AK Ramanujan

Some say
they saw It.
What is It,
the circular sun,
the circle of the stars?

The lord of Caves
lives in the town
of the moon mountain.

***

When the honey-bee came
I saw the smell of flowers
run.

O what miracles!

Where the heart went
I saw the brain
run.

When the god came
I saw the temple run.

***

Looking for your light,
I went out:

it was like the sudden dawn
of a million million suns,

a ganglion of lightnings
for my wonder.

O Lord of Caves,
if you are light,
there can be no metaphor.

***

And three by his contemporary, the woman saint Mahadeviyakka, who died in her twenties:

Make me go from house to house
with arms stretched for alms,

If I beg, make them give nothing.

If they give, make it fall to the ground.

If it falls, before I pick it up, make a dog take it,

O lord
white as jasmine.

***

Other men are thorn
under the smooth leaf.
I cannot touch them,
go near them, nor trust them,
nor speak to them confidences.

Mother,
because they all have thorns
in their chests,
I cannot take
any man in my arms but my lord

white as jasmine.

***

Why do I need this dummy
of a dying world?
illusion's chamberpot,
hasty passions' whorehouse,
this crackpot
and leaky basement?

Finger may squeeze the fig
to feel it, yet not choose
to eat it.

Take me, flaws and all,
O lord

white as jasmine.