SHIVRATRI

SHIVRATRI

It’s that time of year,
when all beings of the manifest world,
from ants, 
to birds, animals and even plants,
behave with a certain cheer,
as if cosmically 'stirred' out of their sleepy dormancy
into a mood of 'waking'.
We humans too find ourselves bubbly.
Winter has gone, and a sparkling Sun
is thawing its way, springing into a fresh sky.
And everyone seems to perceive that certain Divinity,
about the way Nature begins the season's regeneration.
Shiv Bhakts, in particular, seem doubly merry,
with a definitive halo of authority
that has recently dawned on their countenance,
getting into busy mode and frenetic festivity…

And why not?
It’s that time of year, when
in the dark half of 'Phalgun',
in English February or maybe March,
on the I3th or I4th day,
the longest night, which is also moonless and so the darkest
has come.
But behold, they say it is the great night of their auspicious Lord,
Shiva ratri, the beginning of all light.
Celebrated all over India,
in homes and in temples,
by the ascetics and the householders,
in sober prayer and in ecstatic intoxication,
by ritual and by trance,
in stillness and in dance,
and many things more.
It is attended by legends
of the wicked and the devout,
the sickly and the stout,
but none agrees on exactly what it’s about.

"It’s Shiva's birthday," say some.
Others swear it’s His wedding night with Parvati.
Some opine that is when the Ananda Tandava,
the first Dance, began.
Yet others teach of it as the profundity of awakening,
saying,
“It’s the celebration of the day Shiva was illumined
about cosmic mind,
a Primal consciousness,
His own rhythm Divine!”