Shivratri inspired philosophy post.

Shivratri is a Shaivist Sanatani Festival of Hindus and Indian subcontinent. People from Nepal in North to Sri Lanka in South and Pakistan in West to Bangladesh in East have been connected to this festival. But, it’s known to be most important to people from North India mostly as that’s the closest to Kailash - Home of Shiva. These include Hindus of - Nepal and in India - Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttrakhand (north) Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Nagaland, Mizoram, Manipur, Meghalaya & Tripura (north-east) but it’s also found to be strongly followed in Maharashtra (West) and Tamil Nadu (south) they mostly follow different branches.

The festival comes from Shaivist philosophy followers of Hinduism, which talks about ‘Shiv’ as the supreme being - the ultimate Being where everything came from. There are several branches to it and one of the main one is called Ardhanarishwara, which had historically been connected to this festival.

The Ardhanarishwara philosophy talks about Shiv - the masculinity (also known as matter) and Shakti - Femininity (also known pure raw energy). When Shakti meets Shiva, a life is born but take one away and everything turns to dust and raw energy. Both when separate, have their own identities but when they come together, they create the universe. Shiv itself is a void, while Shakti is the light that fills it, no other light can fill Shiva and no other void can hold Shakti.

The image Of Ardhanarishwara gives the same message, a being half feminine and half masculine. It talks about their own separate balance and United balance of the two powers. It also teaches us that every person should balance both in them - feminity and masculinity with no stereotypes or prejudices.

For example - Shiva is known for his anger the most, but he’s also known for his peaceful, respectful nature, just like Shakti is stereotypically known to be “calm” or motherly but she’s also the one who kills those hurting others without missing a beat. The best thing we learn here is about extreme emotion but that’s a whole different bunch of stories.

If we discuss about one of other famous branch, it talks about Shiva’s seperate identity as a void that brings out everything and then in a click, takes it all back in it. According to Shiva, “he” is everything and everyone and yet, nothing and no one. It talks about universal duality - this world and the other world and both being equally important. We get this life for a reason but we should remember that we are living on a planet in a universe with millions others like this one and that basically - we ain’t shit ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and that we should stop behaving like we are.

Sources - Kashmiri Shaivist Literature - Rishi Kashyap, Lal Ded - Lalleshwari, Rupa Bhawani, Abhinavgupta, Rajtarangini, my family gurus, Upanishads, Shiv Purana, Neelmat Purana. The things I talked about here come from Kashmiri Shaivist philosophy, we follow ardhanarishwara. Image one - Ardhanarishwara, Imagine two an angry shiva

Imagine walking in a Victorian Castle, with the love of your life; wearing sophisticated outfits from the 50s-60s and ‘the living sculptures of pemberly’ from pride and prejudice (2005) played in the background.

Imagine, a morning when it’s raining, which is not heavy but not light either. You open the back door of your cottage, to go to back porch and bring the clothes from the drying line, inside. The smell of Chai fills the kitchen and you hold your warm cup and next to the window to enjoy the view. Life is simple, life is mundane.

People generally say “ah, to love a poet is to get immortalised in a verse” but does anyone realize what it’s like? Well, I do. I wandered into his life not so subtly, drew the curtains apart and let the day in. He saw through the layers that I formed up to keep the world away and the spirit of love knocked on my door. In that instance - everything in the past that I assumed to be love, faded away. I became the thudding rythm in his chest, the air that filled him everytime he took a breath. I became the light that filled the great void inside of him, the pashmina thread that sewed his thoughts together; his thoughts were the stardust that enchanted myself and his words became engraved on my skin, visible only to him and me. I became a part of his mind while he became a part of mine and to quote him - as we held hands, our souls interwined.

I am not overly fond of rain, I am more of a light breeze and sunshine person but there is just something about summer morning rains; it reminds me of the feeling of sitting in the balcony with a cup of chai and talking with my family members about mundane things of the upcoming day,

It reminds me of the feeling of studying for exams in the early hours of the morning and the feeling of trying to complete summer vacation assignments two days before submission,

It reminds me of the feeling of rushing to reach school with an umbrella on,

It reminds me of the feeling of discussing the uniquely beautiful weather with my now dead father and how it reminded him of home in Kashmir

(He was thrown out of his home by extremists in the 1990s, yay native refugees with no civil rights and experiences ignored and invalidated by most in the world to show support for “other people”)

• I won’t lie, I miss that feeling the most - discuss the weather with your parents and also taxes, life is short

It reminds me of the feeling of freshness of a new day and new hopes.

Life is beautiful but small, people spend it lying to people - pretending to like them when they don’t, well, since I have lost too much to covid-19 this year (even after doing everything perfectly right), I denounce it. If I hate you, I hate you.

Namastey ┌(★ｏ☆)┘