THE SPEAKING TREE - Sravana, a Month Devoted to Shiva

[Guest guest]

My thanks to Shri Chetan Merani for forwarding me this interesting

article from the Times of India dated THURSDAY, JULY 22, 2004

12:00:00 AM

 

Article by PRANAV KHULLAR

<http://spirituality.indiatimes.com/articleshow/786566.cms>

 

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The devout spend the entire month of Sravana in austerities and

worship of Shiva, culminating in the Sravana Purnima on Raksha

Bandhan day.

Shiva is beyond the gunas, as His trident represents all three,

sattva,rajas and tamas. The elephant skin attire indicates that he

is beyond pride; the tiger skin symbolises his going beyond lust,

and the snake around his neck represents wisdom and eternity.

 

The Shivalinga signifies the basic principles of advaita: non-dual,

indivisible, non-doer, non-enjoyer, un-attached, without qualities.

 

The Dakshinamurthy invocation describes Shiva as the youthful guru,

facing southwards, teaching his elderly disciples through silence,

with the jnana mudra. The Lingashtakam sings of the glories of the

formless advaitic linga, symbol of the cosmos, Brahmanda.

 

The Shiva Mahima Stotra sees him as the Inexpressible Truth. The

three-eyed Shiva's blue-stained neck is a symbolic reminder of His

capacity to remove poisons (the undesi-rable) from the world. The

Yajur Veda describes Shiva as the master-yogi and the repository of

knowledge; He is Mahadeva, the great God. The Panchakshara

Mantra, "Om Namah Shivaye", is a timeless chant of the name of

Shiva, the inscrutable yet easy-to-please Ashutosh.

 

Bhishma in his discourse on Dharma to Yudhishtar in the Mahabharata's

Shanti Parva, describes the observance of the Mahashivaratri fast by

King Chitrabhanu, who, in his previous birth as Suswara the hunter,

roamed the forest in search of game. Once he had to spend the night

atop a tree, and he kept himself awake by shedding tears in

remembrance of his family and by plucking and dropping the leaves of

that tree.

Unconsciously, he ended up "worshipping" the linga embedded in the

earth, with offerings of bael leaves, and tears. This story

represents every man's journey of the Overself, passing through the

jungle of the mind, with its conscious thinking and subconscious

desires, where the wild animals of lust, hatred, greed and jealousy

roam and which have to be subdued. This we can do by rising above

them, just as Suswara climbed up the tree. The bael leaves, sacred

to Shiva, with three leaves on one stalk, represent the working and

surrender of the Ida, Pingala and Sushmna nadi to the Higher Self,

Shiva, the tree representing the spinal column in Kundalini

literature. Suswara's night-long vigil is a call to alertness and

discrimination, his fast represents the ability and need to balance

his excesses with austerity, and the dawning of the day symbolises

the awakening into the cosmic consciousness, through the dark night

of the soul.

 

To some Shiva is the embodiment of asceticism. In his fierce Rudra

aspect, He is the God who releases men of bondage and wanders in

cremation grounds. To others, he is the Universal Father, Bhole Baba,

who blesses all without prejudice. From Lalleshwari in Kashmir to

Karaikal Ammaiyar and the Nayanars of Tamil Nadu, from Vivekananda

who reportedly had a vision of Shiva at Amarnath to Ramana Maharishi

who found Him in the Arunachala mountain, Tiruvannamalai, abhaktas

and advaitists have all been drawn to the magnetic appeal of Shiva.

 

Ananda Coomarswamy sees Shiva as the fountainhead of all Indian dance

and culture traditions. Fritjof Capra views the Shiva tandava, the

primordial dissolution and creation, as an allegory of the movement

of sub-atomic particles, drawing parallels between Indian mysticism

and nuclear physics. So Shiva is anadi, with neither beginning nor

end.