Happy Maha Shivarati from everyone at triyoga. To mark the festival this year, triyoga’s founder and managing director Jonathan Sattin shares his reflection on its meaning.
In the mid-80s when I started practising yoga, I’d come across statues of Hindu deities. As a nice Jewish boy the thought of bowing to a Hindu God or Goddess seemed potentially a mortal sin. One yoga centre I went to in New York had a wall of different deities, so however mesmerising these images were, possibly I was in big trouble.
And then I found out that the core message of all the different images, were in fact representations or embodiments of different aspects of one divine essence. At that point I realised that bowing or whatever ritual I did before one of these beautiful and amazing and sometimes incredibly colourful statues and pictures was a practice to the one, or One that all religions honour. And for me each one reminds me of particular aspects to which I can aspire.
Which brings me to the point. This Friday in India and around the world the festival of Maha Shivaratri is celebrated in honour of the Hindu god Shiva who is known as the auspicious one and one of the three principal deities of Hinduism alongside Brahma and Vishnu.
Actually Shivaratri is celebrated every month (I just learnt this) and Maha (which translates as ‘great’) is celebrated once a year – and this Friday is it.
There are many stories about Maha Shivaratri, which all have lovely underlying teachings that we can apply to our lives. One is that it is the date celebrating when Shiva saved the world through drinking a pot of poison that had emerged from the ocean.
The day is dedicated to Shiva, and that aspect of the divine that embodies virtues such as honesty, self-restraint and transformation. This festival is about overcoming darkness and ignorance in life and is normally celebrated at night. People mark it by fasting (this is more restraint in food rather than an absolute fast), meditation, prayers and chanting.
This is an appropriate time to focus on restraint, forgiveness, repentance, honesty and kindness.
I read this the other day; Shiva is not only outside of us but within us. To unite ourselves with the One Self is to recognise the Shiva in all of us.
