Shiva: My Postmodern Ishta - The Relevance of Piety Today

By Neha Singh

We may not be the greatest in terms of our economic stance, but we do produce the best minds globally in virtually all the fields of material and worldly enterprise.
Our religion keeps us rooted, and it also helps to produce the rigour with which all of us can excel in our individual pursuits.
Today, the government in India is openly religious, and that is great for all those of us who have been ignored, abused, molested and ravaged by the ugly, cancelling , capitalist and cancerous forces of the past.
I urge all of us modern Hindus to get back in touch with our philosophy, practice our religion, and not let it become a prized possession of the pilferers of the past.

• Language: English
• Publisher: One Point Six Technologies Pvt Ltd
• Release date: Jul 5, 2020
• ISBN: 9789390040698

Neha Singh

I am a triple PG in the Arts domain, and I am a published author..I have worked in the corporate sector for 10 years and have studied on anassistantship from the US too. I feel that our philosophy needs to modernize to remain relevant, and it is up to us to separate the chaff from the seeds.

Book preview

EPILOGUE

I hope, as the author of this tome, to enforce the idea of a global renaissance in the Hindu subconsciousness so that we become true leaders of our faith and provide justice to all our masters of the past who left no stone unturned to prove and maintain the superiority of our race. I don’t want to belittle or insult or criticize any other belief system, I only want to emphasize the many facets that make Hinduism the greatest tradition in the world. We only want to re-iterate that we are open to work with and marry into, to befriend or employ any people from any race, such is our might. There are no more wars to be waged, except the ones of poverty and inequality, and those that we must fight within. Must we keep on asserting the rights of the divine female consciousness?

An ESSAY on SHIVA

Shiva- Turiya: The Fourth state apart from the Hindu Trinity

Whichever form you can conceive of an entity, Shiva has it. He is at once a dancer, a musician, a scholar, a pundit, a renunciate, a lover, a husband, a warrior, a king; whatever you can think of, he can become, or rather is!

There is no escaping the reality of Shiva. If you want to sample the nectar of reality, the essence of life, and gain experience in determining the goal of life, Shiva is all over his creation for you to learn from.

Come to him as a student; come to him as a mother; come to him as a beloved; come to him as an old, decrepit being; in any form, in any particle of energy or matter, you can see, feel, hear and think him.

History & Mythology

According to the Shiva Purana, Shiva is the Ultimate being, the super power, the only entity from who both matter and energy are born. He gave rise to the Hindu trinity of Brahma, the Creator, Vishnu, the Preserver, and Rudra, the Destroyer. The act of destruction is the most difficult as it comes with a bad reputation, so Shiva always takes it upon himself to do all the tough tasks.

Shiva’s form: Shiva is a pure white being, symbolic of purity, chastity, wisdom, and knowledge. His throat is blue due to the poison that he gulped during Vishnu’s Tortoise avatar, which was reborn to assist the devas to procure the Somras.

Shiva is handsome, well proportioned, and drapes a tiger skin around his form. He also carries a sword, an axe, a dumroo, a trident, and is called the Lord of the renunciates. His consort is Parvati, and his sons are Ganesh and Kartikeya. They form a happy, nuclear family and reside, even now, on the snowy mountain of Kailash, 22028 feet above sea level.

Shiva is an absolute central, but subtle figure in Hindu philosophy and mythology. With the 9 avtars of Vishnu, he was always around to help him out. Of these, Hanuman, Rama’s devotee is very well known. Other than that, Shiva is known as Dakshinamurthy, Adi Sankaracharya, the guru heritage, and the Hatha Yogis.

Additionally, the 12 jyotirlingas are all built for the various avtars of Shiva, all over India.

His popular son, Parvati’s dearest, is also a very powerful deity in Hinduism. Ganesh, or the lord of the ganas, has to be worshipped before every ritual, project, event, or even Laxmi Puja. Ganesh’s brother, Kartikeya, was given the South province of India, and is worshipped there as Veerbhadra.

Even his dearest vehicle, Nandi, is very popular for his devotion, and is constantly gazing at Shiva and Parvati out of devotion and reverence. Symbolic of his conquests over natural forces, are the various aspects that adorn his personality for e.g. the moon on his forehead shows that he has conquered his mind; the moon god representing the reigning deity of the mind. The river Ganga shows that he has power over wisdom, knowledge and is a divine being. The third eye, a kind of divine perversion to the common intellect, shows that he can turn any distractor, or evil force to ashes!! The dumroo is symbolic of the dance of creation, in which Shiva took on the role of Supreme Being, from whom arose the Hindu Trinity. From the Sattwic aspect of Shiva, arose the Brahmins, or the scientists, from the Rajsic, the warriors, or Kshatriyas, and from his Tamas, grew the laborers and craftsmen.

He is known to scorn death, as he reminds himself all the time that the body is a physical, temporary entity, destined to end in ash. His three eyes represent the cooling, heating, and burning elements in nature; he is in control of all these.

The tiger skin represents the death of the ego. The snake around his neck represents the conquest of the most vicious and powerful being, so docile with Shiva. The trident and sword are brutal reminders to all those who sin or are evil, that not even one thought goes without his knowledge of every single being, atom, and nucleus of every object, coz he is the subject in all.

He is at once very hard with his enemies, and very easy to please for his devotees. It is proclaimed openly in the Shiva Purana, that although Rudra is tamas from the externals, he is Sattwa on the inside.

People all over the world debate on why he is worshipped as the male phallus. This is just for the devotees to quickly take to dispassion after sound knowledge of the facts of life. Other than

that, it is a potent symbol of creation, and of the dual unison of Prakriti-Purusha, the representation of the real with Maya, or how the two, being opposite in nature, actually appear to live together.

He is such a pure being, that even his drug jamborees, his alcohol use, and his outright sexuality, are seen as divine Leelas. As such, he remains unaffected by all these.

All over the Puranas, Shiva is known to create beings from his hair, his nails, and every part of his body that he desires to use. His ultimate creation, aside from his progeny, is, Durga, the Devi, whom all the male gods created with their powers to get rid of the Asura clan. Shiva is fond of the hills and mountains, and resides everywhere almost in the Himalayas.

An ESSAY on Jeeva,

Jagat and Iswara

MANANAN or Reflections

JAGAT: The transience of the world

The world, as Vedanta says, is just a figment of the Creator’s imagination and nothing can be more true than that. When we say that, it doesn’t mean that the world doesn’t exist, but the fact is that no object in the world can give us the true happiness that we are looking for. In that sense, we cannot attach any value to the objects and people of the world, as they do not give us the happiness that we all are looking for.

Our true nature is that of happiness, so we constantly look for it outside, in the material world, only to be disappointed. All we have to do is hold on to a higher purpose, look within ourselves, and we will find all our answers, and even bliss.

Objects, people and relationships do not give us true happiness, because we already have the happiness within, but are only looking for our true selves in the world outside. In order to shift our attention to the inner being, life and circumstances, sometimes, make it really bad, so that we can get to our true nature.

By bad experiences we must realize that what we are looking for is really not available in the world outside. From people, relationships, material possessions and money, we can buy momentary happiness, but the end result is always sorrow.

Is there any escape from death, disease, bankruptcy, old age, epidemics, suicide, sorrow, grief? Why, even in our relationships, we constantly look for happiness and satisfaction, but find nothing but disappointment and failure. Failure on all these fronts is not an indication that you are doing something wrong, but a mere pointer to the real direction that you should be taking.

Many people try and keep trying for happiness from material pursuits and keep banging their heads against a formidable wall, only to meet with disappointment, dissatisfaction, disillusionment and regrets. The message here is that we, as people, need to stop looking and trying outside and instead, start concentrating on the world within.

But what does it mean to look within? To look within means to be able to reflect, think, observe, analyze and to find solutions to our problems. If you’ve been stuck with a problem for years, and despite seeking proactive solutions, haven’t been able to find a solution, then the answer is probably that you have to start looking within.

So many people in their material pursuits become totally disarrayed and unfocussed. So many get distracted and give in to their lower selves. And the ones, who stay afloat, somehow keep pulling on in the hope that there will be some light. Take the examples of Tiger Woods, Michael Jackson, Raju Ramalingam and most of the CEOs, CFOs and leaders of the world business scene. Even politically, no leader is spared; winning and losing are a habit, and none of this can give you eternal peace.

History has proven time and again that man is just a victim of circumstances, and the only way out is by balancing your material life with your spiritual self. If you get too materialistic, too greedy for name, fame, power, then nature has a way of turning your fortune around.

Everyone has complaints with the present system that they are in. At the time of the Communists, there was trouble with the state powers, now capitalism is showing its true colours. Who has any answers to all these failures and problems? Obviously, the answer lies in Vedanta and the fact that self realization and self actualization are the only objectives of human birth.

Many happy people on this side of the world might argue that they are happy and that nothing bothers them. But most of such people are living in a fool’s paradise and being dishonest with themselves. They keep hiding away from the harsh realities of life and seek god only in furthering their material benefits. This is really foolish. Some people also go to the extent of looking for god to pass them in exams and give them a second son, how foolish can fools get?

God, or the ultimate wisdom, is not for petty, personal solutions, but for a higher understanding of the meaning of life. Many people believe that god or religion is just a means of social interaction and rituals are just something that you must do without questioning and unending faith. But this is a wrong perception. God, or religion, is a means of attaining some peace in you daily lives, of doing the right actions and maintaining stability and health of the mind and body.

In that sense, religion is not something that you have to be born into. There are so many western thinkers who are actually Hindus at heart and follow the questioning of the Indian Vedic texts as their religion.

Raman Maharshi says to question within yourself and ask the question, ‘Who am I?’ to get rid of unwanted bodily identification and suffering. J Krishnamurti also suggests thinking and questioning as the means to sort your issues and problems out. This is what Vedanta extols all the time. In all of Adi Shankaracharya’s texts he has encouraged questioning and deep digging of the facts of life. This approach is the best way to attain some sort of balance in your life.

The idea of a perfect world doesn’t exist. We are imperfect beings in an imperfect world, and all our attempts to perfect the world and people around us will turn futile. The Western world seemed to have had all the answers till now. Science became the new religion practiced all over the world, but still, despite their very best efforts, they are unable to stop political and business turmoils.

India now, seems to be the hotspot destination, where you can find rapid economic growth hand in hand with spiritual awareness, but India is reeling under a lot of pressure due to corruption, student suicides, farmer suicides, scams, shams and an ineffective government.

Spurts in the economic condition have worked wonders for some classes of people, and for some like the Adivasis and backward tribes, whom Rahul Gandhi and Medha Patkar are trying to help, they have proved disastrous. Imagine taking away land from farmers and not recompensating them enough.

Even in the cities, the majority of the population lives in slums and they keep coming in droves to cities from villages, drastically affecting the lives of the urban populace. All the major cities in India have serious drainage, water, habitation, rehabilitation problems, and it seems to get worse with time.

The rich class and the affluent have built walls around themselves and such people and don’t hesitate to exploit the poorer sections as much as they can. Everybody sees these beggars, hutments, encroachers all over the city, but everybody just turns a blind eye and continues living life, as if in a bubble.

I don’t understand how you can be so immune to poverty and the mindsets with which the business class exploits the menials is a chilling reminder of autocratic and dictatorial power. If these head honchos are not dictators, then who are they? Saviours of humanity?

If you look around sharply, you will see, especially in the urban setup that the competitors are always trying to undermine the competition. And it gets so bad that many families surrender themselves to other richer families. Husbands become servants, wives are exploited and children turn into domestic helps. If this is not disturbing, what is?

All these aspects of life just bring to the fore the fact that human life is seeped in misery and suffering, and for those who don’t see it this way, there’s just ignorant bliss, but the bubble will finally burst someday. All these things have been observed and seen before. We had prince Gautama, who renounced life to seek meaning and answers for all the troubles afflicting man.

But we don’t have to blindly follow these leaders. We have to examine for ourselves whether we are fit for the spiritual path and whether we have that burning desire to realize our true potential.

Nowadays, there’s a trend that spiritual awareness and well being can be obtained together with material gains, but this has to be proven. Many people believe that spirituality is another factor that adds to the happiness quotient of our lives, so they commercialize spiritual teachings