Abstract: Shiva is among the most
complex figures in the entire tradition of Sanatana Dharma. He is
simultaneously the destroyer of the Trimurti, the supreme ascetic who sits in
meditation on Mount Kailash, the cosmic dancer whose Nataraja form contains the
entire universe within its movement, the householder who is devoted to his
consort Parvati, and the principle of dissolution that the tradition regards as
necessary for creation rather than opposed to it. The Shiva Purana, the Linga
Purana, the Skanda Purana, and passages throughout the other major Puranas
together build a portrait of Shiva that extends far beyond his narrative
appearances into a systematic and sophisticated Shaiva philosophy. This article
explores what the Puranas are saying about Shiva when they move beneath the
mythological surface, how the specific symbols associated with him, the third
eye, the crescent moon, the skull garland, the Ganga in his matted hair, the
serpent Vasuki, carry philosophical rather than merely decorative significance,
and what the tradition's understanding of Shiva as both destroyer and liberator
reveals about the Puranic vision of reality.
Keywords: Shiva, Mahadeva, Shaiva
philosophy, Puranas, Nataraja, Trimurti, dissolution, liberation, symbolism,
Shiva Purana, Linga, Parvati, Sanatana Dharma
Introduction
Of the three principal deities of
the Puranic tradition, Shiva is the hardest to approach through the ordinary categories
of religious thought. Brahma creates. Vishnu sustains. Shiva destroys. But this
three-part division, while useful as an introduction, immediately raises the
question of why destruction is divine, why the tradition places the principle
of dissolution on the same level as creation and sustenance, and indeed why it
sometimes places it higher, presenting Shiva as Mahadeva, the great god, the
supreme principle that contains and transcends the functions of the other two.
The answer the Puranas develop is
that destruction, in the Shaiva understanding, is not the opposite of creation
but its necessary partner. The universe cannot create endlessly without also
dissolving. The forms that consciousness takes cannot evolve without the
dissolution of forms that have become inadequate. And at the deepest level, the
dissolution that Shiva embodies is not the destruction of what is real but the
dissolution of what is unreal, the stripping away of the accumulated layers of
false identification through which consciousness has forgotten its own nature.
In this deepest sense, Shiva is not the destroyer of consciousness but its
liberator, and his function in the cosmic order is not opposed to Vishnu's
sustaining function but complementary to it.
The Third Eye:
Perception Beyond the Ordinary
Among Shiva's most distinctive
attributes is the third eye, situated on his forehead and closed in most images
but whose opening produces fire that can reduce whatever it is directed at to
ash. The most famous deployment of this eye is in the destruction of Kama, the
god of desire, who attempts to distract Shiva from his meditation with an arrow
of longing. Shiva opens his third eye, and Kama is instantly reduced to ash.
The symbolic reading of this
episode is precise and philosophically significant. The third eye is the eye of
transcendent perception, the faculty that sees beyond the surface of
appearances to the underlying reality. When this faculty is turned toward
desire, toward kama in all its forms, desire is immediately seen for what it
is: not a permanent feature of the self but a superimposition, a distortion
produced by the mistaken identification of the self with the body-mind complex.
Seen clearly, desire dissolves. This is not the angry destruction of something
real but the dissolution of something that was always only an appearance,
unable to survive the light of genuine seeing.
त्र्यम्बकं यजामहे सुगन्धिं पुष्टिवर्धनम्। उर्वारुकमिव बन्धनान्मृत्योर्मुक्षीय मामृतात्॥
Tryambakam
yajamahe sughandhim pushti-vardhanam, Urvarukam iva bandhanat mrityor mukshiya
mamritat.
(We worship the
three-eyed one, the fragrant one who nourishes and enriches. As a cucumber is
released from its vine, may we be liberated from death, not from immortality.)
Rigveda, 7.59.12
(Mahamrityunjaya Mantra)
The Mahamrityunjaya Mantra is
addressed to Tryambaka, the three-eyed Shiva. The prayer asks for liberation
from death, not from immortality: an extremely precise request. The prayer is
not asking for escape from the physical process of dying, which the tradition
regards as natural and necessary. It is asking for liberation from the
identification with the mortal that makes death feel like the end, the
dissolution of the false identification so that the immortal, which was always
already present, is recognised. This is Shiva's gift: not the prevention of
dissolution but the dissolution of what prevented recognition of what cannot be
dissolved.
Nataraja: The
Dance That Contains All Movement
The Nataraja image, Shiva as the
lord of the cosmic dance, is among the most philosophically dense images in the
entire visual tradition of Sanatana Dharma. The image shows Shiva dancing
within a ring of fire, one foot raised, one foot pressing down on a dwarf
figure called Apasmara, one hand holding a drum and another holding fire, one
hand in the gesture of protection and another pointing down toward the raised
foot. Every element carries specific and consistent symbolic meaning.
The drum in Shiva's upper right
hand is the sound of creation, the nada-brahman, the primordial vibration from
which all of manifest existence emerged. The fire in the upper left hand is
destruction, the dissolution that is the necessary complement of creation. The
lower right hand in abhaya mudra, the gesture of protection, assures the
devotee that beneath all the creation and destruction there is a presence that
protects. The lower left hand points to the raised foot, which is the foot of
liberation, the refuge of the soul in the midst of the dance. And the foot
pressing on Apasmara, the dwarf of ignorance and forgetfulness, represents the
cosmic intelligence overcoming the fundamental obstacle to liberation: the
inability of the ordinary mind to remember its own divine nature.
नटराजाय नमस्तुभ्यं सृष्टिसंहारकारिणे। भवबन्धविमोक्षाय सच्चिदानन्दमूर्तये॥
Nataraja
namastubhyam srishti-samhara-karinе, Bhava-bandha-vimokshaya
sac-cid-ananda-murtaye.
(Salutations to
Nataraja, the cause of creation and dissolution, the liberator from the bondage
of existence, the embodiment of existence-consciousness-bliss.)
Traditional
Nataraja Stuti
Sac-cid-ananda-murta: the
embodiment of sat (pure existence), chit (pure consciousness), and ananda (pure
bliss). Shiva's dance is not merely a cosmic performance. It is the movement of
the ultimate reality through the forms of creation and dissolution, expressing
in its movement the three fundamental qualities of the absolute: that it is,
that it knows, and that it is joy. The Nataraja is not a metaphor for reality.
In the Shaiva understanding, it is reality, dancing.
Ardhanarisvara:
The Unity Before Division
One of the most philosophically
significant of Shiva's forms is the Ardhanarisvara, the half-woman, half-man,
in which the right half of the figure is Shiva and the left half is Parvati,
his consort. The image is usually explained as a statement about the unity of
masculine and feminine principles, and this is correct as far as it goes. But
the Puranic understanding reaches further: the Ardhanarisvara is an image of
the state of reality before the primary cosmic division into subject and
object, before the consciousness-principle and the energy-principle have
separated into the duality that creates the manifest world.
Shiva is Purusha, pure
consciousness, and Parvati is Prakriti, the dynamic energy-principle, in the
specific form that Shaiva philosophy takes over from the Samkhya framework.
When they are one, there is no creation: the absolute rests in itself. When
they distinguish, creation begins: the dynamic energy of Prakriti moves through
and within the infinite stillness of Purusha to produce the manifest world. The
Ardhanarisvara is the image of the primordial unity from which this creative
movement arises, the reminder that beneath the duality of creation the non-dual
ground is always present.
Conclusion
Shiva in the Puranas is the
tradition's most challenging portrait of the divine, precisely because what he
embodies, dissolution, the stripping away of all form and all identification,
is what the ego most profoundly resists. Every other aspect of the divine can
be approached with some degree of comfortable familiarity: Brahma creates what
we know, Vishnu sustains what we love. Shiva destroys. Not what we hate but
what we cling to. And in that destruction, the tradition insists, is the
deepest possible grace.
The Puranic Shiva is not the
terrifying other. He is the one who does what consciousness must ultimately do
to itself: strip away every accumulated layer of false identification until
what remains is the naked, luminous, indestructible awareness that was always
the ground of everything. His third eye sees through appearances. His dance
sustains and dissolves the cosmic order simultaneously. His foot presses down
on the forgetfulness that keeps consciousness from recognising itself. In the
tradition's understanding, this is not destruction. It is liberation. And the
two are the same thing.
शिवाय विष्णुरूपाय शिवरूपाय विष्णवे। शिवस्य हृदयं विष्णुर्विष्णोश्च हृदयं शिवः॥
Shivaya
Vishnu-rupaya Shiva-rupaya Vishnave, Shivasya hridayam Vishnu Vishno cha
hridayam Shivah.
(Shiva is in the
form of Vishnu; Vishnu is in the form of Shiva. Vishnu is the heart of Shiva;
Shiva is the heart of Vishnu.)
Uttara Ramacharita
(traditional verse)
At the deepest level, the Puranas
ultimately dissolve even the distinction between the great gods they celebrate.
Shiva and Vishnu are one reality appearing in different aspects: the same
consciousness expressing itself as preservation and as liberation, as
sustaining and as dissolving, as the one who holds the world and the one who
sets it free. The stories of Shiva in the Puranas are stories about what it
looks like when the dissolving aspect of the ultimate reality enters the world
in the forms and relationships that make its nature visible to the human mind.
References and
Suggested Reading
Shiva Purana (with commentary by
J.L. Shastri)
Linga Purana
Skanda Purana
Rigveda, Mandala 7 (Mahamrityunjaya
Mantra)
Devdutt Pattanaik, Shiva: An
Introduction (2005)
Alain Danielou, Shiva and the
Primordial Tradition (2007)
Ananda Coomaraswamy, The Dance of
Shiva (1918)
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