Who is Siva?
Understanding God As He is worshiped at
Kauai's Hindu Temple
God Siva is among the most mysterious, complex, compassionate
and profound conceptions of the one Supreme Being to be found in
the religions of mankind. He is looked upon as the Creator,
Preserver and Destroyer of all existence, the Cosmic Dancer who
animates the universe from within. He is honored as Pure Love,
Light, Energy and Consciousness. He is contemplated as the
timeless, formless and spaceless Absolute Reality. In all three
of these perfections is Siva revered in Kauai's Hindu temple.
In Ways to Siva, curator Joseph Dye Lahendro
wrote: "Who is Siva? What is Siva? To His devotees, Siva is
everything: He is the root and support of the universe; He is
the creative-destructive flow of life that rushes through it. He
is motion and calm, male and female, light and dark, ascetic and
lover, everything and its opposite. Siva is an ambiguous God who
embodies, defines and reconciles within Himself all of life's
processes and paradoxes. Siva is existence. He embodies the
structure of the universe."
Living with Siva, by Sivaya Subramuniyaswami,
explains, "Siva dances in the atoms throughout this universe.
Siva dances energetically, eternally. Siva is eternal movement.
His mind is all-pervasive, and thus He sees and knows everything
in all spheres simultaneously and without effort. Siva is the
Self, and He is the energy we put forth to know the Self. He is
the mystery which makes us see Him as separate from us. He is
the energy of life, the power in the wind. He is the dissolution
called death, the peace of motionless air. He is the great force
of the ocean and the stillness on a calm lake. Siva is All and
in all. Our great God Siva is beyond time, beyond space, beyond
form and form's creation, and yet He uses time and causes form.
He is in the sky, in the clouds, in the swirling galaxies.
Siva's cosmic dance of creation, preservation and dissolution is
happening this very moment in every atom of the cosmos. God Siva
is immanent, with a beautiful human-like form which can actually
be seen and has been seen by many mystics in visions." Twenty
centuries ago Rishi Tirumular, a South Indian saint, praised
Siva's dance: "In all worlds He is, the Holy Lord. In darkness
He is, light He is. In sun He is, in moon He is. Everywhere He
is. The Lord is in all creation. None knows His coming and
going. He is distant. He is near. Multiple He is. One He is.
Water, earth, sky, fire and wind, the spark within the body--all
these He is. He is the walking soul here below. Deathless He
is."
The religion of Siva: Those who worship Lord Siva are
Saivites, and their religion is called Saivite Hinduism. Saivism
represents roughly half, perhaps somewhat more, of Hinduism's
one billion members. It shares more common ground than
differences with other denominations. Scholars tell us Saivite
Hinduism is mankind's oldest religion, the venerable Sanatana
Dharma. They trace its roots back 6,000 years and more to the
Indus Valley civilization. But sacred writings and legend tell
us that there never was a time when Saivism did not exist. Its
grandeur derives from a sweet tolerance for the views of others,
coupled with a practical culture, an emphasis on personal
spiritual effort and experience, the perception that God is
everywhere present, and therefore no aspect of life may be
divided from religion, and a joyous devotion to the one God
which all men worship and which it knows as Siva, "the
Auspicious One," and the knowledge that Truth lies within man
himself.
The four sacred Vedas, mankind's oldest scriptures,
intone, "To Rudra [Siva], Lord of sacrifice, of hymns and balmy
medicines, we pray for joy and health and strength. He shines in
splendor like the sun, refulgent as bright gold is He, the good,
the best among the Gods (Rig Veda 43.45)." "He is
God, hidden in all beings, their inmost soul who is in all. He
watches the works of creation, lives in all things, watches all
things. He is pure consciousness, beyond the three conditions of
nature (Yajur Veda, Svet.U.6.11)." "There the eye
goes not, nor words, nor mind. We know not. We cannot understand
how He can be explained. He is above the known, and He is above
the unknown (Sama Veda, Kena U. 1.3)." "Fire is
His head, the sun and moon His eyes, space His ears, the
Vedas His speech, the wind His breath, the universe His
heart. From His feet the Earth has originated. Verily, He is the
inner Self of all beings. (Atharva Veda, Mund.U. 2.1.4)."
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