Shiva

Shiva is auspiciousness. That is what everybody seeks. Also called shubha, mangala and kalyana, it signifies all is well. In this life of ours, the dark clouds of disappointment, despair and insecurity do not seem to leave us and we are constantly seeking the bright sunshine of happiness, cheer and fearlessness. Shiva represents just these most desirable conditions – outside and inside. So when we say Om Namah Shivaya, we are implicitly expressing our longing for order, harmony and total well-being.

Shiva destroys. He negates the false. He removes asat. Advanced Vedanta declares that this negation of the false is the only thing that needs to be done. “The true reward of wisdom is the complete ending of all illusion,” says Viveka-Choodamani. When the misconceived snake no more appears, the beam of light has done its job. It goes without saying that the rope, which alone was there all along, becomes visible with no obstruction. When clouds go away, the sun shines forth without any need for something to be done for us to see the sun. The essence of wisdom is therefore to stay alert, notice the distortions in our perception and be free from the prejudice that causes distortion.

The third eye of Shiva is thus Clear Seeing (samyag–darshana). Lust, greed, insensitivity and indifference are products of certain conditionings; they are our delusion and they are not part of right seeing. They go away in right seeing. Using a metaphoric language, it is said Shiva’s third eye burns away Kamadeva, the god of passion. Seeing every situation rightly, without the coloured glasses of our likes and dislikes, surely puts an end to our selfish desires. What remains is pure love, symbolized by the coming together of Shiva and Parvati.

Scholarship does not help in living rightly. The unique skill of keeping an open mind does. No wonder the Gita admits, “He alone is happy who does not come under the sway of desire and anger.” Scholars are sometimes seen to have as much desire and anger as anybody else, if not more. They are able to talk or write a lot on the state of freedom from desire and anger; but they are not free. This does not mean scholarship is evil. On the contrary, it is good in its own place and serves much purpose in keeping the society informed. The means to freedom is the ability to remain watchful, moment to moment.

The wise one sees how foolish it is to be jealous; giving up (negating) follows this seeing. She sees the meaninglessness of personal ambition – of the pleasure of visualizing herself as wealthy or mighty. She sees clearly how thought projects that pleasure and there is no actual happiness in being, let us say, the Chief Executive of a large organization. She sees that certain conditioned patterns are behind the urge to become the CEO. To pursue something projected by thought is different from pursuing a fact. Getting nearer to a picture of fire cannot give to us warmth; getting closer to fire can and will.

Pursuit of pleasure is a movement of thought, observed Krishnamurti. It is one thing to eat some good food and enjoy it when we are hungry. It is quite another to be driven by memories the next day when we pass by the same restaurant and make an unplanned diversion into the eating place, order the same dish as yesterday and so on. No wonder the food does not taste as good as it did yesterday. In such cases of being led by thought (memories, fancies, projections, images), we lose touch with the reality. We become insensitive to the true needs of our body. The natural intelligence of our body goes unheard. The body says, “I am not hungry; I am tired; I need rest.” Thought says, “This is time to eat; it is foolish to rest now.”

To see forms of psychological confusion within us is the nature of right perception in daily life. Then we have invoked Shiva. He destroys all distortions and restores to us our contact with truth. That is truth, well-being and beauty: satyam, shivam, sundaram.

If you love, you may do what you will.

But if you start by doing what you will, .. , you will never love. – J Krishnamurti