A section from the journey

Shiva, the Auspicious

Shiva is one of the great gods, and one of the most loved. His very name means "the auspicious," the kind one. He holds the opposites of the world in one form: the silent ascetic deep in the mountains, and the dancer whose dance turns the whole cosmos. He is worshipped in his bronze dance and in the simple, abstract sign of the linga. We meet him gently, the way the tradition does.

We turn now to , and we turn gently, for he is held in deep love and deep awe at once. His very name tells you something. Shiva means the auspicious one, the kind, the gracious. People say the name softly.

And yet Shiva is also the one who unmakes the world. When an age has run its course, it is he who dissolves it back into stillness, so that it may be born again clean. This is not cruelty. It is the gardener's pruning, the clearing that lets new life come. The tradition does not soften this. It holds the kind one and the ender as one god.

That is the secret of Shiva. He holds the opposites of the world together. Picture two images side by side, and you will begin to know him.

In the first, he sits utterly still. He is the great ascetic, high on a snow mountain, eyes half closed, sunk in meditation so deep that the whole busy world falls away. Ash on his body, a crescent moon in his matted hair, a calm beyond all wanting. He is the stillness at the centre of things.

In the second, he dances. And his dance is not for show. It is the very motion of the universe — being made, being held, being unmade, all in one ceaseless rhythm. The bronze-makers of the south gave this dancing Shiva his most famous form. They called him , the Lord of the Dance.

Picture the bronze. Shiva dances inside a ring of fire, which is the circle of the cosmos itself. One hand holds a small drum, and its beat is the first sound of creation. Another hand holds a flame, which is dissolution. A third hand is raised, palm out, saying simply: do not be afraid. One foot crushes a small crouching figure — the demon of forgetting, of dullness. The other foot lifts free, light as release. And in the middle of all that motion, his face is perfectly calm. He is the stillness at the heart of every change.

Long ago a scholar of art looked at this bronze and tried to say what it holds. His words have stayed with people ever since, for they reach past the metal to the meaning.

“Whatever the origins of Śiva's dance, it became in time the clearest image of the activity of God which any art or religion can boast of.”

Shiva is loved in one more form, the most quiet and the most abstract of all. It is the — a smooth upright sign, often a plain rounded pillar of stone, set in the dark inner heart of his temples. We should speak of it with care and respect, the way the tradition does.

The linga is not a picture of Shiva. It is the opposite of a picture. It is a sign that points beyond every shape, toward what has no shape at all. Where other images give the divine a face, the linga gently takes the face away, and leaves only presence — the formless reality you cannot draw. To bathe it with water and offer it flowers is to honour the One that no image can hold. So Shiva is worshipped at both ends at once: in the most vivid image, the dancer, and in the least image of all, the bare upright stone.

This is why so many give their whole hearts to Shiva. He does not hide the hard truths — that things end, that the world must be unmade to be remade. Yet he meets you with the raised hand that says, do not be afraid. He is the auspicious one. The dance turns, and at its centre there is peace.

Shiva's face stays calm in the very middle of his wild dance. Where in your own life have you found a small still point — a steady breath, a quiet centre — even while everything around you was moving fast?