BOM BOM HARA HARA
There is an enduring legend about Shiva and His meditations.
It is said Shiva felt intensely about the miseries of the world and sat in meditation to 'improve' those conditions that had been brought upon all beings owing to free will, their own actions and consequent collective Karma.
Sister Nivedita of Vivekananda says of Shiva in her charming book 'Cradle tales of Hinduism'
In wild and lonely places, at any time, one may chance on the Great God, for such are His most favoured haunts. Once seen, there is no mistaking Him. Yet He has no look of being rich or powerful. His skin is covered with white wood-ashes. His clothing is but the religious wanderer's yellow cloth. The coils of matted hair are piled high on the top of His head. In one hand He carries the begging-bowl, and in the other His tall staff, crowned with the trident.
High amongst the Himalayas tower the great snow-mountains, and here, on the still, cold heights, is Siva throned. Rapt in silence, does He sit there, absorbed and lost in one eternal meditation. With each breath of His, outward and in, worlds, it is said, are created and destroyed. Yet He, the Great God, has nothing of His own; for in all these that He has created there is nothing; not kingship, nor wealth ; that could for one moment tempt Him to claim it. One desire, and one alone, has He, to destroy the ignorance of souls, and let light come.
Once, it is said, His meditation grew so deep, that when He awoke He was standing alone, poised on the heart's center of all things, and the Universe had vanished. Then, knowing that all darkness was dispelled, that nowhere more, in all the worlds, was there blindness or sin, He danced forward with uplifted hands, into the nothingness of that uttermost withdrawnness, singing, in His joy, "Bom! Bom!" And this dance of the Great God is the Indian Dance of Death, and for its sake is He worshipped with the words "Bom! Bom! Hara! Hara!"
What a beautiful story, well enshrined for the lovers of the timeless Shiva. But inspired by the phrase "God alone knows" my own meditations led me to believe that beautiful as the story is, the concluding part is perhaps a mystic decoy :
When Shiva realised there was no world other than Himself, He went into a spontaneous dance, but , for Shiva to see that once again He was alone, is not a matter so easily labelled as happiness, it could have been a paramount sadness : How would you know, sister, for you were not there when He was alone...
But someone did give her a fantastic insight into Shiva: Her description of Him, simple as it is, is not just endearing, but also the most accurate one that i have ever read. Perhaps these words of the sister point that she seems to have actually seen Him:
It is, however, by the face of the Great God that we may know Him once for all, beyond the possibility of doubt. One look is enough, out of that radiance of knowledge, one glance from the pity and tenderness in His benign eyes, and never more are we able to forget that this whom we saw was Siva Himself.
And presuming that her Gurudev, Swami Vivekananda gave her the story, it dawns that it was none other than him in whom she clearly saw the light of Shiva, beyond a doubt.
Aum Namah Shivaye.
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