Om Namah Shivay ॥ ॐ नमः शिवाय ॥

Today is Maha ShivRatri, the day following the great night of Bhagwaan Shiva.. As many of you may know, this day is also celebrated as the day on which Bhagwaan Shiva married Parvati. Here is an interesting interpretation of the “night of Shiva”:

Let us come back to the subject of Sivaratri, the night of Siva. When you perceive an object, you call it waking. When you do not perceive it, it is darkness. Now in the waking condition – the so-called waking world – you see present before you a world of objects, as you are intelligent. In dream also there is a sort of intelligence. But in deep sleep there is no intelligence. What happens? The senses and the intellect withdraw themselves into their source. There is no perceptional activity, and so the absence of perception is equated to the presence of darkness. The cosmic Primeval condition of the creative will of God, before creation – a state appearing like darkness, or night – is what we call the condition of Siva. It is very important to remember that the state of Siva is the primordial condition of the creative will of God, where there is no externality of perception, there being nothing outside God; and so, for us, it is like darkness or night. It is Siva’s night – Sivaratri. For Him it is not night. It is all Light. Siva is not sitting in darkness. The Creative Will of God is Omniscience, Omnipotence, Omnipresence – all combined. Sometimes we designate this condition as Isvara.

The Supreme Absolute, which is indeterminable, when it is associated with the Creative Will with a tendency to create the Cosmos, is Isvara in Vedantic parlance, and Siva in Puranic terminology.

…On Sivaratri, therefore, you are supposed to contemplate God as the creator of the world, as the Supreme Being unknown to the Creative Will, in that primordial condition of non-objectivity which is the darkness of Siva. In the Bhagavadgita there is a similar verse which has some sort of a resemblance to this situation. “Ya nisa sarvabhutanam tasyam jagarti samyami; yasyam jagrati bhutani sa nisa pasyato muneh”: That which is night to the ignorant, is day to the wise; and that which is day to the wise, is night to the ignorant. The ignorant feel the world as daylight and a brightly illumined objective something; and that does not exist for a wise person. The wise see God in all His effulgence; and that does not exist for the ignorant. While the wise see God, the ignorant do not see Him; and while the ignorant see the world, the wise do not see it. That is the meaning of this verse in the second chapter of the Gita.

…Sivaratri is a blessed occasion for all to practise self-restraint, self-control, contemplation, Svadhyaya, Japa and meditation, as much as possible within our capacity…We can do Japa or we can do the chanting of the Mantra, ‘Om Namah Sivaya’. We can also meditate. It is a period of Sadhana. Functions like Mahasivaratri, Ramanavami, Janmashtami, Navaratri are not functions in the sense of festoons and celebrations for the satisfaction of the human mind. They are functions of the Spirit; they are celebrations of the Spirit.

It is also perhaps the simplest of all “festivals” associated with Hinduism in that it does not need any elaborate rituals and just the “jap” (meditative chanting) of “Om Namah Shivay” is sufficient. On this occasion, courtesy Practical Sanskrit, here is a wonderful interpretation of one of the best known hymns in praise of Shiva:

कर्पूरगौरं करुणावतारं संसार-सारं भुजगेन्द्र-हारम् ।

सदा वसन्तं हृदयारविन्दे भवं भवानी-सहितं नमामि ॥

= karpUra-gauram karuNA_vatAram, saMsAra-sAram bhujagendra-hAram |
sadA vasantam hRidayA_ravinde, bhavam bhavānI-sahitam namAmi ||

meaning: To the one of the complexion of camphor (karpUra), to the avatAra of mercy (karuNA), to the essence (sAram) of the world (saMsAra), to the one with serpent (bhujagendra) garlands (hAram), to the one who always (sadA) resides (vasantam) in the lotus (aravinda) heart (hRidaya), to THEE, with pAravatI – I bow.

***
On a related note, one of my dreams is to visit all the twelve “Jyotirlinga”(s) associated with Lord Shiva and then write a travelogue around that (I have been to six but half still remain)…Someday I hope will manage to do that.

UPDATE: I should “warn” everyone to be careful about this. It could cost you a job! Here’s a mini-quiz for the day (or “Night of the Great Lord Shiva”):

Who said this?

“If Om Namah Shivay is the reason I didn’t become president, then certainly it’s a great blessing…”

Answer: Dr Karan Singh