Magnificent photo of Shiva

His statue anyway. Located in Bangalore, India.

http://nandri.com/blog/Lord Shiva (india).jpg

Liked it so much, I made this sig picture.



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Yes very peaceful indeed.

 

Too peaceful. I prefer the dance as opposed to the sitting.

Can't raise hell when you're sitting down.

Won't have to wait much longer though.


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The dance is an illusion, he is really sitting down in the whole process.

 

You only "think' he's sitting down.


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No, i see that he is sitting down, look , he is sitting down in that picture

Besides, No matter how much he dances on the outside, he always sits on the inside.

 

There is neither sitting nor dancing, for Shiva is not a form. He is the Pure, the all pervading. He cannot dance ebcause there is no space outside him to move in. He cannot sit because there is no space outside him to sit in. He can be, that is all.

And I have been to that temple in B'lore many years ago. It's a very peaceful place. A tad glitzy, but peaceful nonetheless.

 

He is the all-being 403 error.

 

When all the forms are his, then shiva certainly has a form. Also, a form is not opposite of pure, because Forms are actually shiva who is pure, hence forms are pure.
He has a form, because forms exist in him.

When the dance is himself, the stage also himself, and the dancer, the act of dancing is himself, he can most certainly dance. so , you cannot say he cannot dance.

He can sit, because he sits within Himself. He is space that He sits inside.


He can be all then he has the power to also be Himself.


Yes, he sits in himself and he dances outside himself when the dance , the act of dancing and the stage is actually made up of himself. Hence, the all pervading Narayana exists as a form within himself. Hence, Narayana is you, is me, and is the supersoul in us both.

and also!

we are all like the blind men trying to say what an elephant is by just looking at the parts.


He is not known by our assumptions and intellect.

 

Its certainly all for the benefit of the mind that we use such images. As the mind itself is spiritually blind, imagery is the braille by which it sees.

Even thoughts live and die under the dancing Shiva's feet.

Even the ones used to describe him.



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It looks negative to me.....................like he's just been zapped by the Daleks.

 

Man! shiva is so pure that the mind is not enough to see the truth. If you want to grasp Narayana through the mind, it would be like trying to dry up the entire ocean by drinking it through a small straw.

The only way we can realize him is if we surrender ourselves to Him.

 

Before you can do that you have to realize that you don't know God. For the mental ego, this can be a huge stumbling block. But mind is only a tiny aspect of reality - often it tends to conceal rather than reveal the deeper truth.

To use my fave Eckhart quote again -'we must not be satisfied with the God we have though of, for when the thought slips the mind, that god slips with it'.

 

My own mental imagery of him has always been blue, and glowing with a rarified, etheric kind of light. Hence, I created him in that image.

I did turn the photo into a negative, then played around with the color controls to give him that appearance.



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Absolutely BBB, I agree, we really have to break free from our ego that thinks it knows anything.

 

That's a wonderful quote Bill. That one will stay with me.

 

Miester Eckhart was in my opinion one of the greatest of western mystics. His overall view is actually not disimilar to Vedanta in many ways.

If you're at all interested, a good general intro to his writings is 'The Way of Paradox' by Cyprian Smith.

Although he escaped censure during his lifetime, after his death his works were frowned upon by the church, and only in recent times has he been fully re-instated and recognized.

Another brief quote....'the very best and noblest attainment in this life is to be silent and let God work and speak within. When the powers (ie. of thought, imagination and sensation) have been completely withdrawn from all their words and images, then the Word is spoken. Therefore He, (God) said 'In the midst of the silence the secret word was spoken unto me'. And so, the more completely you are able to draw in your powers to a unity and forget all those things and their images which you have absorbed, and the further you can get from creatures and their images, the nearer you are to this and the readier to recieve it.'

Although the language is different, this is very similar to many yoga teachings I'm sure you'll agree.

 

Blue is right for Shiva.

 

Makes sense from a physics point of view too, as the bluish end of the light spectrum is the highest frequency we can see with our physical eyes.


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Paramashiva is the Transcendental Self of reality. Paramesvari is His dress as all planes below that. Paramashiva is the source of all consciousness, "cit". Paramesvari as Prana takes that consciousness and refracts it as all of our consciousnesses, as a prism breaks up the light into a spectrum.
Prana is our limited minds of finite existence, the cit consciousness of Shiva is our only actual Self.
This picture is worth a thousand pranams. Om Namah Sivaya
Namaste, Yogin Bhairava Atmabhoda Sarasvati