Aum Shivaapriyaya Namaha!

13

The Cosmic Couple

I saw Him, I saw Him,

The heart’s desire of the beautiful Uma.

He enslaved me, He enslaved me,

I adorned my head with the feet of the Lord.

SAINT SUNDARAR

Parvati was transported from the comfortable palace of her parents to the chilly caves of the Himalayas. Henceforth these caves would serve as her boudoir. She had no regrets; she had chosen her path, and in her eyes everything was perfect. The faultless, brilliant peak of Kailasa was the place chosen by Shiva for his new abode. Close by was the scintillating lake called Manasarovar, or lake of the mind, where celestial damsels sported with their lovers. In these icy waters Parvati would bathe. She was enthralled by the austere beauty of her new residence. The lack of comforts did not put her off in the least. She was prepared for it. With her beauty and wit she conquered the heart of this great yogi, this strange ascetic whom she had married. She sported with him on the mountain peaks and slopes of the Himalayas and bathed in the cold waters of the lake amidst the lotuses and the royal swans. She was as gentle and graceful as he was wild and forceful. Her soft and slow lasya, or woman’s movements, and his forceful and masculine thandava, or cosmic dance, together enraptured the entire universe. Her beauty inspired him to create all forms of art, song, and dance. He became master of all kalas, or art forms.

They danced and made love to the vibrations of the universe. Wrapped in his arms she traveled on the bull Nandi across the skies.

When it rained he took her above the clouds and when it was hot, he took her into caves. Thus aeons passed while the cosmic couple sported with each other on the peak of Kailasa and in various other celestial spheres.

As time elapsed two demons were born into the world, brothers named Shumba and Nishumba. As a result of their tapasya, Brahma granted them the boon that they requested. They insisted that they should meet with death only at the hands of a woman. She should be a virgin, born of a part of Shiva, and she should be so beautiful that they would fall in love with her. Brahma agreed, and the brothers became so bold that they began to harass both gods and humans; they were quite sure that no such woman would be forthcoming. The gods went to Brahma and he in turn went to Shiva and begged him to create a woman who would be a part of him and extremely beautiful. Shiva agreed and bided his time to get Parvati into a rage, so that she would shed her color and become the virgin goddess, Kaali, who alone would have the qualifications to kill the demons.

Many years passed while the great yogi appeared to be totally tamed by Parvati’s exquisite beauty and charm. Her wit and wisdom stimulated him to share with her all the knowledge that he had gained by his intense tapasya. Because of her the whole world gained this knowledge, which has come down to us through the Puranas and the Shastras and Tantras. There was no end to her thirst for knowledge and no end to his wisdom. She was the perfect student and he, the perfect teacher, Dakshinamurthy. She asked many questions pertaining to society, nature, life, marriage, the duties of all types of people; about music, dance, palmistry, astrology, occult sciences; about birds, beasts, and life after death, as well as different methods of freeing oneself from mortal coils. There was no subject she did not touch upon and no question that he could not answer. The wealth of their divine discourses has come down to us in various ways through the minds of the sages who have meditated upon him.

Parvati seduced him in subtle ways, and he realized that one who ran away from life without dealing with and overcoming the dualities would never attain liberation. On the other hand, one who was totally immersed in worldly pleasures without a thought of the supreme truth underlying everything was a fool who would never attain peace of mind, much less liberation. Harmony, or balance between these opposites, was what led to truth—harmony between Purusha and Prakriti, matter and spirit; harmony between the cosmic couple, Shiva and Parvati.

Once they had a dance contest in which she had to imitate all his poses. She could perform as perfectly as he could, but in order to tease her, he took the difficult posture known as urdhva-thandava. In this pose he lifted his right leg straight up above his head. She had to declare herself to be the loser for she could not do this. Then she adopted a perfectly beautiful feminine pose in front of him. She was so dark that she looked as if she were a statue made from ebony. Shiva laughed and teased her about her color. This was a good opportunity to enrage her, he thought.

“You are indeed Kaali,” he said, “goddess of the night, goddess of death, goddess who removes all the evils of the age of Kali.”

Hurt by his words, she decided to change her color. Bidding goodbye to him, she went to the same forest where she had done tapasya in order to get him, as her husband. Shiva allowed her to go since he knew that this parting was part of the plan to kill the two demons. In the forest she started rigorous tapasya. Once a huge tiger approached her with a view to satisfying its hunger, but as it came near her, its body became numb, and it could not move. It froze in the crouching position in which it had rested before pouncing on her. The tiger stayed in that position, never taking its eyes from her form. After a long time she opened her eyes and seeing it, felt pity and conferred her grace on it. The tiger repented and realized the nature of the divinity on which it had unknowingly meditated for so long by fixing its gaze on her. The numbness disappeared, and from then on it became her faithful slave and stayed close to her, guarding her from attack by other wild animals.

Seeing her engaged in rigorous penance, Brahma arrived on the scene and praised her. He begged her to take another form and rid the world of the two demons, Shumba and Nishumba, who were terrorizing everybody.

“O Mother! I have granted a boon to these arrogant demons, and only you are capable of vanquishing them. I beg you to destroy them. You alone can do this.”

Hearing this, the goddess Parvati cast off her dark skin and became fair in color, thus acquiring the name Gauri, or the radiant one. The dark outer skin took the form of Kaali, the virgin goddess, with the luster of a black rain cloud. She held the conch and discus of Vishnu as well as the trident of Shiva in her various arms, for she had the strength of both. She had three eyes and was moon-crested like Shiva. She had three natures—gentle, terrible, and a mixture of the two. She was a virgin, beautiful and invincible. Parvati told her to go with Brahma in order to slay the demons. Kaali took a huge tawny lion that appeared on the scene as her vehicle. Bowing to her mother, Parvati, she rode on the lion and went to the Vindhya Range of mountains that were to be her abode.

The two demons, Shumba and Nishumba, came to the place where she had taken up residence and were smitten by her beauty. They tried to molest her, but she killed them easily, as had been prophesied by Brahma.

Part of Parvati’s dark color is said to have gone into the river Yamuna, or Kalindi as it was later called, when it made its way from the Himalayas to the forest of Vrindavana, where Krishna was to sport with the gopis (milkmaids) in an age yet to come, the age of Dwapara.

Gauri returned to Kailasa and delighted her lord once more in her new role as the goddess with the color of molten gold.

Seeing that she was still a bit annoyed at him for having allowed her to go to the forest without protest, he said, “O my beloved one! Do you not know that we can never be parted from each other? It was only for fulfilling the request of the gods that I ridiculed your color. This universe of forms is known only through words. You are the form of the words, and I am the meaning of the words. How can meaning be separate from word? You are the form of knowledge, and I am the object of all knowledge. Who can separate us?” Thus by his gentle teasing and rational talk he won her over until she became her usual happy self. Once again they indulged in all their favorite sports.

Sometimes they played dice in their mountain retreat. In one of their games Shiva wagered his trident and Parvati, her jewels. He lost and then staked his serpent and lost again. Parvati seemed to be on a winning spree, and soon Shiva had lost everything. He pretended to be quite disgruntled and walked off by himself into the forest. Vishnu met him there and promised to help him win if he could entice Parvati to another game.

Parvati agreed since she was sure her luck would hold, but she began to lose steadily, and Shiva was able to win back all that he had previously lost. Parvati was highly suspicious of this sudden change of luck and warned him of the consequences of cheating. In the middle of their heated argument, Vishnu appeared and pacified Parvati by telling her the truth. He admitted that he had entered the dice, thus ensuring that Shiva won. He also reminded them that life was like a game of dice—sometimes we win, sometimes we lose, but both life and dice games are unpredictable. We should not set much store by either gain or loss but should carry on with the game. This bit of salutary advice pacified both Shiva and Parvati. Shiva pronounced a blessing on all those who chose to play dice on that particular day. This day came to be known as Diwali, the festival of lights.

Once, the cosmic pair had an argument about the reality of the world. Shiva, the perfect renouncer, held the advaitic view that the world was only an illusion and nothing existed except Brahman. Parvati advocated the Sankhya view and insisted that Prakriti was equally real. She herself was Prakriti, so nothing could exist without her. To prove her point she chose to leave the icy peaks of the Himalayas and withdraw into her own subtle nature. Naturally her disappearance caused havoc in the world. Everything came to a standstill. The earth became barren, the seasons did not change, and there was no food for anyone. Animals, humans, demons, and gods all starved. They cried to Prakriti to save them from this cruel fate. Even the sages declared that without food nothing was possible, least of all the realization of Brahman. The Divine Mother was unable to resist the pleas of her children and chose to manifest herself in the holy place called Kasi, or Varanasi. There she set up a kitchen to feed her hungry children, and all of them came in different forms and were given plenty by her. Even Shiva, the perfect yogi, came to her in the form of a bhikshu, or beggar, and begged for alms. She fed him with her own hands. Thus she came to be known as Annapurna, or giver of food.

Many were the lilas enacted by the cosmic couple in order to enthrall the world. Once, it is said, Shiva wearied of so much conjugal bliss and retreated into the forest to resume his tapasya. Parvati followed, but he took no notice of her. She prayed to Vishnu for help, and he advised her to take on the form of a tribal woman and entice her husband. Thus, she distracted Shiva, and he followed her back to their own cave. Inspired by her beauty, he composed many tunes on his favorite instrument, the rudra vina.

Another time when Shiva was teaching her, he found her attention wandering to fish in the lake. “If contemplating fish is more interesting to you than my words, you might as well become a fisherwoman,” he said. His words came to pass, and Parvati was born as the daughter of the chief of a fishing village. She was wild and beautiful and could fish and handle boats better than any man. Her father, the chief, was delighted and wondered how best he could find a husband to match his beautiful daughter, for she was quite unlike the rest of the fisherfolk. From the peak of Kailasa, Shiva watched the progress of his beloved with interest and wondered how he could get her back. One of his ganas, Manibhadra, decided to help his master. He took on the form of a shark and began to harass the fisherfolk in the ocean off the coast where Parvati lived. He overturned boats and ate all the unwary fishermen who ventured into the water. The fishermen were dejected and afraid to go fishing because of this terrifying creature. At last the chief declared that his daughter would be given as the bride of anyone who killed the shark. Shiva, disguised as a fisherman, went to the village and easily killed the shark. He then married Parvati and took her back to their Himalayan retreat.

It was Shiva and Parvati who taught the world the secrets of the kundalini Shakti, the coiled serpent of spiritual power that lies at the base of the spine. Parvati herself was the energy of the kundalini, the primary spiritual energy in all humans that seeks union with Shiva, the pure spirit. It lies coiled at the base of the spine at the bottom of the passage known as the sushumna (channel for psychic energy). Shiva, the pure spirit, is stationed at the top of this passage at the energy vortex, or chakra, called the sahasrara, on the crown of the head. Parvati is Shakti, the manifestation of all energy, and Shiva, the manifestation of pure spirit. She is matter, or Prakriti, and he, consciousness. He is known as Bhava, or eternal being, and she Bhavani, or eternal transformation. They are the opposite and complementary poles of existence. When they join with each other in cosmic union, the individual soul, or jivatma, ceases to exist and melts into the paramatma, or cosmic soul. Parvati uncoiled herself and rose up through the sushumna nadi like a snake that unwinds itself and darts toward its prey. Piercing the six chakras, or whirls of spiritual energy situated in the spinal column known as mooladhara, swadhisthana, manipura, anahata, vishuddhi, and ajna, she rose to join her Lord, the pure cosmic consciousness, in the seventh chakra, the sahasrara, the thousand-petaled lotus on the crown of the head. These seven chakras are the psychic centers for fear, desire, hunger, anger, communication, and introspection, and one who has pierced all these rises beyond these emotions and becomes the pure consciousness that is Shiva. As Parvati touched each of these chakras, they bloomed like lotus flowers with petals of different hues. When she reached the last chakra she no longer existed as a separate being. In that state of perfect union there was bliss. There was no duality, only unity—Shivoham, Shivoham (I am Shiva). Thus aeons passed while the cosmic couple was submerged in the blissful union of Purusha with Prakriti, which was totally unproductive in terms of progeny. In that state there was neither creation nor destruction; everything was bliss alone. When there is neither lust nor desire, how can offspring be begotten? The gods were troubled. They were anxious for the union of Shiva and Parvati to produce a son who would kill the asura, Taraka, and it looked as if the couple had completely forgotten the purpose of their marriage. The gods approached Vishnu and begged him to intercede on their behalf and remind Lord Shiva of his promise.

Aum Namashivaya