Shiva had no sense in the transitory pleasures of life, so he rejected samsara,
smeared his body with ash, closed his eyes and performed austerities.
Shiva's tapas generated so much heat that his body transformed into a pillar of
fire - a blazing lingam that threatened to destroy the whole world. The gods
did not know how to control Shiva's fire.
Suddenly there appeared a yoni - the divine vessel of the mother-goddess. It
caught the fiery lingam and contained its heat, thus saving the cosmos from
untimely destruction.
Shiva is often pictured in a pacific mood with his consort Parvati, as the
cosmic dancer Nataraja, as a naked ascetic, as a mendicant beggar, as a yogi
Dhakshinamurthy, and as the androgynous union of Shiva and Parvati in one body
(Ardhanarisvara).
Shiva also takes the form of Ardhanari, his androgynous form. The right side of
the sculpture is Shiva and the left side is Parvati. The attributes of each are
split directly down the middle.
Another example of Shiva's apparent synthesis of male and female attributes is
seen in his earrings. He wears one earring in the style of a man and the other
as a female as shown in the two different earrings Shiva wears.The third eye is
a symbol of higher consciousness. It is also something with which he can
destroy his enemies "with fire." He can also kill all the gods and
other creatures during the periodic destruction of the universe. Shiva's third
eye first appeared when Parvati, his wife, playfully covered his other two
eyes, therefore plunging the world into darkness and putting it in danger of
destruction.
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