Art is a bridge across centuries, and my latest project, "Punarnavā," dives deep into the timeless traditions of the Pala School of Art (8th–12th Century CE) to capture the eternal, cosmic union of Shiva and Parvati.

Spanning seven detailed chapters—from weathered Siddham inscriptions of the Adi Shaktipeethas to celestial hosts, Navagrahas, and classical Ragas—this painting is a synthesis of history, theology, and classical iconography.

I invite you to explore this visual universe and step into the sacred journey with me through the full walk-through video here: https://youtu.be/ASw-3xgUJ50

Shiva.

Even the word itself feels like a philosophy.

In Sanskrit, Śiva (शिव) means auspicious, benevolent, gracious, kind, peaceful something that brings well-being. And that is already fascinating, because when we imagine Shiva, we often picture the ash-covered ascetic sitting in silence on Kailasa, surrounded by serpents, wearing a crescent moon, holding a trident, with the Ganga flowing from his hair. He looks terrifying, peaceful, beautiful and completely detached at the same time.

But perhaps that contradiction is exactly the point.

Shiva is not simply a god who lives somewhere in the universe. In many Hindu traditions, Shiva becomes a way of thinking about the universe itself creation, preservation, destruction, time, consciousness, silence, death, transformation and ultimately that which remains when everything else disappears.

And the deeper you go into Shiva, the less he looks like an ordinary deity and the more he begins to resemble a question.

Who are we before we give ourselves a name?

What remains when the ego disappears?

What was there before creation?

And what remains when creation is gone?

That is where Shiva becomes truly fascinating.

In the Rigveda, we encounter Rudra, a fierce and mysterious divine presence associated with storms, healing, wildness and the power of nature. Over centuries, Rudra and Shiva became deeply connected, and the figure we know as Shiva developed through layers of Vedic, epic, Puranic and philosophical traditions.

The name changes.

The stories change.

The forms change.

But something remains underneath them all.

The destroyer.

And even that word is often misunderstood.

Shiva does not simply mean destruction in the sense of destroying something because it is evil. Destruction is necessary because nothing in the material universe can remain exactly as it is forever.

A body is born and dies.

A mountain rises and erodes.

Stars are born and eventually disappear.

Civilizations appear and vanish.

Even our thoughts arise and disappear every second.

So destruction is not necessarily the opposite of creation.

Destruction is part of creation.

That is why Shiva can be both terrifying and compassionate.

He destroys forms, but the destruction of a form makes transformation possible.

The old must disappear for the new to appear.

And perhaps the greatest thing Shiva destroys is not the world, but ignorance and ego.

Look at his form carefully.

The matted hair represents the life of the ascetic, someone who has stepped away from ordinary attachment.

The Ganga descending from his hair represents the divine river, but symbolically she can also be understood as the uncontrolled force of existence being received and transformed through consciousness.

The crescent moon represents time and the cycles of growth and decay.

The serpent around his neck represents something humans normally fear yet Shiva wears it like an ornament. Poison, fear, death, instinct, nature itself: nothing needs to be rejected when consciousness is no longer controlled by fear.

Then there is the third eye.

People often describe it simply as a magical eye that shoots fire.

But philosophically, it can be read much deeper.

Two eyes see the world of duality this and that, pleasure and pain, self and other, life and death.

The third eye represents a different kind of seeing.

Seeing beyond appearances.

And when Shiva opens it, Kama desire is burned.

That story is beautiful because desire itself is not necessarily evil. But uncontrolled desire can become the chain that keeps the mind constantly running after something outside itself.

Shiva's third eye therefore becomes a symbol of awareness powerful enough to burn through illusion.

Then there is the ash covering his body.

Why ash?

Because ash is what remains after fire has consumed everything else.

Beauty becomes ash.

Power becomes ash.

Money becomes ash.

Fame becomes ash.

The body itself eventually becomes ash.

The king and the beggar eventually arrive at the same place.

Shiva wears that truth openly.

It is almost as if he is saying:

You are spending your entire life trying to possess things that time will eventually turn into dust.

And yet, Shiva is not a pessimistic figure.

He is surrounded by life.

He has Parvati beside him.

He is father to Ganesha and Kartikeya.

He rides Nandi.

He lives with his family on Kailasa.

He dances.

He meditates.

He loves.

He destroys.

He creates.

He is simultaneously the greatest ascetic and the householder.

And that contradiction is one of the most beautiful things about him.

Shiva does not tell us that life must be escaped.

He shows that one can participate in life without becoming completely possessed by it.

Then comes perhaps the most famous symbol associated with Shiva:

the Shiva Linga.

The linga is frequently reduced to a simplistic interpretation, but its significance in Shaiva traditions is far richer. The Sanskrit word liṅga can mean a mark, sign, symbol or characteristic something through which something else is indicated.

The Shiva Linga therefore becomes a symbol through which the formless is represented.

And that is an extraordinary idea.

How do you represent something that has no form?

You cannot paint infinity realistically.

You cannot sculpt consciousness.

You cannot give a shape to the absolute.

So the tradition uses a symbol that points beyond itself.

The Linga becomes not merely an object, but a reminder:

the form is not the final reality.

And then Shiva appears as Nataraja the Lord of the Dance.

This is where the philosophy becomes almost cosmic.

Shiva dances within a circle of flames.

One hand holds the damaru, the little drum associated with rhythm and creation.

Another hand carries fire, representing dissolution.

One hand offers abhaya, the gesture of fearlessness.

His raised foot offers liberation.

And beneath his foot lies Apasmara, representing ignorance.

Look at what that image is saying.

Creation.

Preservation.

Destruction.

Concealment.

Liberation.

All happening through one cosmic dance.

The universe is not imagined as something static.

It is moving.

Expanding.

Collapsing.

Changing.

Dying.

Being born again.

And Shiva dances through all of it.

Then there is Ardhanarishvara Shiva and Shakti united within one form.

Half Shiva.

Half Parvati.

This is one of the most profound images in Hindu philosophy because it challenges the idea that reality can be understood through absolute separation.

Consciousness and energy.

Stillness and movement.

Masculine and feminine.

Witness and manifestation.

Shiva without Shakti is often described as inert consciousness; Shakti without Shiva is movement without the still ground of awareness.

Together, they become existence.

And then we reach Shiva as Mahadeva the Great God.

But even "Great God" is not necessarily the end of the journey.

In several Shaiva philosophical traditions, especially non-dual traditions such as Kashmir Shaivism, Shiva is understood in a much more radical way as the ultimate reality, pure consciousness, the fundamental awareness from which manifestation arises.

At this level, Shiva is not merely sitting somewhere on Mount Kailasa.

Kailasa becomes symbolic.

The temple becomes symbolic.

The statue becomes symbolic.

Even the name becomes symbolic.

Because if Shiva is ultimate consciousness, then the question changes from:

"Where is Shiva?"

to:

"What is it that is aware of the fact that I exist?"

You can close your eyes.

Thoughts appear.

A memory appears.

A sound appears.

A feeling appears.

Then another thought comes.

And another disappears.

But something is aware of all of them.

What is that?

You can change your clothes.

Change your job.

Change your opinions.

Change your relationships.

Your body changes.

Your personality changes.

Your thoughts change.

But there is still a sense of "I am."

Shaiva philosophy takes that inquiry extraordinarily deep.

And this is where the word Shiva begins to move from mythology toward metaphysics.

Shiva can become the stillness behind movement.

The silence behind sound.

The witness behind thought.

The space in which experience happens.

The consciousness in which the universe appears.

And then there is Shiva as Shunya the emptiness, the vastness, the absence of everything that can be grasped.

But this should not be confused with simple nothingness or nihilism.

The philosophical idea is subtler.

If everything we can point toward has a form, a name, a boundary and a beginning, then what happens when we remove all of those?

No name.

No form.

No ego.

No possession.

No identity.

No "mine."

No "me."

What remains?

Words begin to fail there.

And perhaps that is why Shiva is so often associated with silence and meditation.

Because the deepest things cannot always be explained by adding more words.

Sometimes they are approached by removing them.

Remove the name.

Remove the image.

Remove the story.

Remove the ego.

Remove the desire.

Remove the fear.

Remove the idea of who you think you are.

And eventually you reach a silence where there is nothing left to describe.

That silence is not necessarily emptiness in the ordinary sense.

It can be understood as the absence of everything that was never permanent in the first place.

This is why Shiva can simultaneously be called:

Rudra, the fierce one.

Mahadeva, the Great God.

Pashupati, Lord of beings.

Nataraja, Lord of the cosmic dance.

Neelakantha, the blue-throated one.

Bholenath, the simple and easily pleased Lord.

Mahakala, the Great Time.

And ultimately, in non-dual interpretations, that which is beyond every name and form.

Even the story of Neelakantha, when Shiva drinks the poison produced during the churning of the cosmic ocean, carries a powerful symbolic image.

The poison threatens everything.

Shiva consumes it but holds it in his throat.

He does not swallow it into himself.

There is something deeply human in that image.

We encounter poison in life too anger, hatred, pain, jealousy, suffering.

We cannot always prevent these things from entering our world.

But perhaps wisdom means learning not to let the poison travel through the entire being.

Hold it. Understand it. Transform it. Don't become it.

And then there is Mahakala | Shiva as Time.

Time eventually consumes everything.

The strongest body.

The greatest empire.

The richest person.

The most beautiful object.

The tallest building.

The oldest civilization.

Everything enters time.

And Shiva is called Mahakala, the Great Time, because nothing stands outside change forever.

This is why Shiva is so closely connected with cremation grounds and ash.

Not because death is celebrated for its own sake.

But because death exposes the illusion that we are permanent.

In a cremation ground, every social identity becomes meaningless.

The rich and poor.

The powerful and powerless.

The famous and forgotten.

All become ash.

And Shiva sits there.

Calm.

Unmoved.

Almost as if saying:

"Look carefully. This is the one truth you were trying not to see."

And perhaps that is why Shiva is both terrifying and strangely comforting.

Because if everything is temporary, then your suffering is temporary too.

Your fear is temporary.

Your failure is temporary.

Your success is temporary.

Even the person you think you must remain forever is temporary.

The ego wants permanence.

Shiva teaches impermanence.

The ego wants control.

Shiva sits in stillness.

The ego wants more.

Shiva meditates with almost nothing.

The ego says, "I am this."

Shiva asks:

"Who?"

And perhaps that is where the journey finally reaches its strangest destination.

You begin with a god.

You study his stories.

You learn his symbols.

You visit his temples.

You chant his name.

You meditate on his form.

Then slowly, the question turns inward.

Who is Shiva?

Is he the ascetic on Kailasa?

The dancer in the flames?

The deity represented by the Linga?

The destroyer?

The compassionate Bholenath?

The consciousness described by Shaiva philosophers?

The silence of meditation?

The vastness beyond thought?

Perhaps the answer depends on how deep you are willing to go.

At the surface, Shiva is a deity.

Deeper, he becomes a philosophy.

Deeper still, a symbol of consciousness.

And at the deepest level, for those traditions that understand Shiva as the Absolute, there is no longer a separate "you" standing outside Shiva and looking at him.

There is only reality.

No temple.

No mountain.

No statue.

No story.

No name.

No form.

No "I."

Just That.

And maybe this is the strange beauty of the word Shiva.

It begins as a word meaning auspicious.

It becomes a god.

The god becomes a symbol.

The symbol becomes a philosophy.

The philosophy becomes an inquiry into consciousness.

The inquiry removes everything that can be named.

And when there is finally nothing left to hold onto...

Shiva remains.

Or perhaps even that sentence is too much.

Because when everything has disappeared, there is no longer a separate person left to say "Shiva remains."

There is only the silence.

And maybe that is why the ancient image of Shiva sitting in meditation feels so powerful.

He isn't running after the universe.

He isn't trying to possess it.

He isn't afraid of its destruction.

He simply sits.

Still.

Silent.

Watching everything arise and disappear.

Mountains.

Rivers.

Stars.

Kings.

Cities.

Bodies.

Thoughts.

Worlds.

And somewhere beyond all of that movement is the eternal question:

What remains when everything that can change has changed?

That is where, for me, Shiva stops being merely a figure from mythology.

That is where Shiva becomes the question itself.

And perhaps the deepest journey toward Shiva is not climbing Mount Kailasa.

It is going inward until there is nothing left to climb toward.

Nothing left to possess.

Nothing left to call "me."

Until even the seeker disappears.

And in that final silence...

there is no longer a Shiva standing somewhere outside you.

There is only existence.

Only consciousness.

Only silence.

Only the immeasurable.

Shiva.

I feel so composed after surrendering to lord shiva. Basically there is no noise in my thoughts anymore. It's complete void or we should call it silence . No need to rush anymore . Wherever I go, I can see signs of his presence. Really feels so good and peaceful.