When the Lord closes his eyes ...
When the mass of human population moved to Gangetic planes in the interest of getting more favorable living conditions in terms of higher rainfall, more fertile land, etc, the centroid of human mass in the country naturally shifted to the tract of land between two mighty rivers namely the Ganges and the Yamuna. The geographical location of the area itself was an inhibitor for trade, at least till the time the design of trade routes adapted the post mega draught topology of the region.
Read Part 1
http://www.actualization.in/2020/12/who-is-shiva-part-i.html
The settlement, which started in the Gangetic planes post the centuries of city destructing calamity, paid absolute homage to Shiva. This is why perhaps the river Ganges and its different sites slowly gained such prominence in Shaivism, across the length of the river starting from Gangotri the source to Ganga Sagar the confluence.
It’s the life in the Gangctic planes that initiated a gradual shift in human thought process, once important rituals of transaction called “Yagna” started taking back seat as people started to understand natural forces can probably not be influenced or evoked merely by pouring milk far into the sacrificial fire. This learning perhaps was purely by the experience of things like sacrificing to the ‘King of Gods – Indra’ for years, but not being able to convince him to give away even a drop of rain during the mega-drought years.
The theosophical Continuum
This gradual shift seeded the idea of Upanishads alternatively known as Vedanta, which itself means the end of Vedas as these texts were mostly placed as an annexure to original texts of Vedas. While the main texts were the manual for the Sacrificial or Transactional ritual called Yagna, the annexures are the philosophical investigations by the ancient seers, on basic questions of human beings, like How and why does the world exist? What about the existence of themselves and the cause behind it.
It was around this time the first post ritualistic Indic Philosophy developed or at least came to the foreground. This was Samkhya school of thought, conceived by the first philosopher of humankind the great sage Kapila, Samkhya spoke about the union between two independent & parallel existing entities called Purusha and Prakriti, where Purusha is the Consciousness and Prakriti is the matter.
It further said if the universe exists, it exists as we are conscious of it, without a consciousness to perceive the matter of the universe, it itself is nothing. This marked the beginning of the endless effort of humankind to quest the ontology of consciousness. This cosmology existed as the primary philosophy of Hinduism until it gets challenged by the Buddhists.
Are we not going back to the point where part one of the series started from? “Samsara” only is the universe, it is nothing but the projection you sense through your sensory organs, on your mental plane illumined by the consciousness. Yoga philosophy was a direct derivative of Samkhya Philosophy, which named our spinal cord the “Meru Danda” – or the center of the universe, which definitely is the samsara, epistemological universe and not the ontological one.
This is indeed a heavy concept, that’s why instead of it being the core of at least three of six major Hindu philosophies, it remained beyond the reach of the normal people. Who by then was out of the ritualistic phase and took refuge in the concept of the almighty, the God in different forms. From the philosophy, the general population filtered out the objects of worship in a collectively meticulous way. The objects were idolized in different ways, it was this time when the formless shapeless Purusha started being worshiped as uncarved rocks, as they are available in nature. Even today many of the important temples related to Shiva has uncarved rock as the object of worship – this only is the Purusha aspect of Shiva, the formless, shapeless pure consciousness, creator of epistemological world samsara.
Since in the philosophy, the existence of Consciousness & Matter is beyond time, the rocks for which the root cannot be traced beneath the ground became Anadi, today out of all uncarved rocks present in the temples most important ones are root fewer ones. For these, there is no beginning they are Swayambhu or the self-manifested. This is the local tongue became Shambhu, one of the most popular names of the lord.
The most famous of all is the Prakriti-Purusha worship in Linga form, where a cylindrical rock is shown in a lipped diskette like structure representing intercourse, where Purusha the male form, a cylindrical rock, and Prakriti the female form in form of the surrounding diskette are seen. They together symbolize the indispensable importance of matter along with consciousness, like matter alone could not have created Samsara, consciousness alone could not have even learned the act of being conscious in the absence of matter. Both are as important as the male body and female bodies are to procreate, the samsara is nothing but grand procreation only.
Worshipping the idea of procreation was probably not something new in this land, the ithyphallic hints in the ancient archeological discoveries at least suggests that, by this time the idea just might have got a deeper meaning taking the essence from the ideology of the Vedantas, described by the sage Kapila and remained as the more sensible among all the ideas even today. The philosophy and the philosopher are still seen to be important cornerstones in the current form of Shaivism.
The advent of Lord Buddha
It was about 2500 years ago, born was the man who changed the way people perceived religion. It is him for whom the very first-time human beings scientifically enquired the vague area called faith. His brutally straight approach with all honest intentions to include the practicalities of human life and the use of common man’s language as the preaching medium immediately got him immense popularity – he succeeded to convert almost the whole of India to a new doctrine, known today as Buddhism.
What Lord Buddha preached was as simple as “The way to get rid of sufferings of life”, which he said to have been rooted in the desires. One must win over his or her desires first, to get rid of sufferings – the way for which the lord prescribed is the eightfold path. This is still considered as the structural base of any form of Buddhism. Buddha was never even bothered about the existence of any almighty or God, rather he said even if he exists hardly has help to offer in one individual’s path to liberation. The path to liberation according to Buddha is through the body-mind complex, where the mind constantly is thriving to satisfy the desires through the body both internal & external. Until one gets rid of all of his or her desires, will be trapped in the cycle of birth and rebirth.
This radical way not only challenged classical Hinduism but also brought a fresh breathe of air to the religious thought process in India. Commoners connected extremely well with the simplistic idea, rather than big philosophical talks like “one being the center of the universe”. Instead of gaining an out of the world popularity within his lifetime only, Buddha teaching speaks very loudly about winning over desires essentially through developing dispassion for worldly affairs. Whichever might have torched a fire of desire or has a possibility of doing so, started becoming impure in life. Mass in the country thus developed a natural tendency towards renouncement at this time. Which initiated the Bhikshu tradition, the traditions of religious renouncers by the virtue of their victory over desire trying to attain liberation.
But what exactly did the Bhikshus do? Simplistically they withdrew themselves from all worldly activities which may sow a seed of desire in the human mind. How they withdrew? By shutting down senses through which one interacts with the world around. This was central not only in Buddhism but incidentally in all schools of thought which sprouted around this time. The Jainism conceptualized by Tirthankara Mahaveer just about 100 years before Buddha awakened himself, was the pioneer among them.
The Theravada Buddhism's oldest continued doctrine of Buddhism still promotes this Bhikshu tradition, where getting Nirvana or Liberation is an individual goal, which is attained by ending desires through shutting down of senses by the Arhat, a candidate trying to attain that.
But for a Bhikshu or Arhat, the journey of liberation was a personal one, it was his merits under which he is supposed to get liberated – there is no role of society there, neither the Arhat cares for society or the people around after he attains liberation. This tradition remained at the top of its popularity for at least 5 centuries, until Mahayana Buddhism came into being.
These 5 centuries roughly between Fifth Century BCE to 1st Century CE, gave the renouncer the highest possible honor and respect. The proportion of spiritual seekers, that too through the path of sensory withdrawal became heavier and heavier on the society during this time. There was such an environment created, where somebody who cannot take the prescribed path which was the first choice of any human being, only remains in mainstream life.
The current was so strong, mainstream Hinduism also had to evolve itself to pay the highest homage to the renouncer, who can develop ultimate dispassion for the worldly affairs. This was the time Shiva started being depicted as the great renouncer penancing since eternity somewhere in the Himalayas, a symbol of ultimate dispassion even to the extent of habitable conditions. This was the time when the human psyche itself developed dispassion about participation in the world as all desires work at this level, so the level itself seemed flawed to many. The time was so, perusing the path of realization to transcend to a different plane altogether became almost everyone’s life goal – withdrawal by shutting down the senses became the tried and tested path to attain it.
Just like Buddha, the Hindu renouncer also had to symbolically shut his senses down in the artist’s impression – thus the lord closed his eyes. It’s a fact that idols on a mass scale were imported to Hinduism from Buddhism. The statue of Buddha was first produced in huge numbers at around 1st Century CE, the same ideology and symbolism were applied to the image of Shiva as those traits were considered to be the supreme in terms of ideology. There are no historical accounts of that, but we may safely hypothesize the Ganges symbolism with Shiva by then has already been introduced.
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The form of Shiva had a long journey to reach the one, in which he is seen today. He has happily taken, components without discrimination. Sometimes Shiva is Purusha as described by Hindu sage Kapila, sometimes he took the world withdrawing, meditating form of Buddha. This is the beauty of Classical religion, it not only gives you the freedom to have your version of it - it inches towards positive improvement every time someone tries to perceive the philosophy in his way.
to be contd.
~Avirup Chakraborty
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