Lord Shiva

At the Indian Sculpture Park, Roundwood, Co Wicklow

From the crown of his hair flows the river of creation, the Goddess Ganga (to wit, the Ganges). From his third eye he sends forth fire, the God Agni, and who destroys the world.

Shiva represents the maturing adult who is driven to solve the quandary of life, namely how to live life to the full, how to savour the reality of the most trivial moment while remaining fully attuned to the cosmic and metaphysical dimensions which threaten to reduce the moment to insignificance.

As married ascetic, Shiva lives out the extremes of life, now chaste, now sensuous; now controlling, now releasing; now destructive, now creative; now male, now female. In him, the sacred and the profane express to perfection. His life exemplifies in the extreme the essential urge to being and non-being, and to the deathless, hence the heart of all humans.

Shiva’s life provides no final and permanent solution, no synthesis, no balance, no rest, no peace. He expresses the realization that the real world, Samsara, results from dynamic interaction that creates order from chaos. Alone the frozen moment of action, whatever its shape, is perfect, true, real. Alas, that moment cannot last.