Maha Shivaratri: The Huntress & the Boon

A Meditative Interpretation of the Story & Philosophy of Maha Shivaratri

A huntress darts through the forest, in hot pursuit. The chase is all encompassing, her vision narrows, engrossing all of her mind and senses. Tracking, sprinting, silently stalking, hour after hour. And suddenly, in a silent moment, she feels a chill in the air— she feels herself squinting and realizes the light is fading. She looks up, and though familiar with these woods, is somewhat unfamiliar with this spot. WIth only a little bread in her satchel, and a cup of water in her canteen, she climbs a nearby tree for safety through the night. It’s going to be a long night. 

Our daily pursuits may not be exactly like that of the huntress, but we are all chasing our meal in some fashion. Narrowing our vision and losing ourself in our pursuits is often applauded by our culture— trophies are given for those who give 110% on the field, and accolades for those who lose themself in their role, despite the consequences. The yogic tradition has a different perspective on this path. The happiness we chase after, whether it’s in the form of a paycheck or a waterfall, is an illusion, a covering of shiva. We are chasing a chocolate bunny, cute, delicious, but essentially hollow and incapable of really satisfying us on a deeper level. That’s why the happiness we find in objects is always temporary, or as the Sutras say, limited.

“The results of your God consciousness (caitanya) being fenced in by the five coverings is that you act in a limited way, know in a limited way, love in a limited way, live in a limited way and possess in a limited way… Consequently, in your world of illusion, where you remain filled with insecurity and fear, these limitations are bondage. Here, being completely dependent on that illusive energy of knowledge and being without real knowledge, you are continuously doing right or wrong. So, being completely entangled in that fence you become just like a beast.”(Tantrasadbhāva)

When we pour our energy into chasing after a limited form of Shiva we literally become a limited form of Shiva, which means we suffer. Like the huntress, these pursuits leave us lost at the end of the day, our shoulders held tight with a mild anxiety, and our thumbs scrolling through our phones hungry for satisfaction. It’s not that having a tough day makes us into beasts or causes suffering, it’s that we cling so intensely to the ‘rights and wrongs’ of our minds and ‘continuously’ push ourselves into these woods that ‘entangles’ in this fence of suffering— Our suffering is mostly at our own hands. 

Time passes for the huntress in the tree. There’s the physical discomfort of the tree, the subtle and ever present grip of the chill in the air, and the persistence of an empty stomach. The night is long. Slowly, the light begins to add color to the trees, and after that, even more slowly, warmth. She sits up in the tree, and reaches for her canteen. She knew she would need to save that small cup of water for the trek home, and it wasn’t easy to keep from drinking it at night, but now she must have a sip. The weight of it feels off as she lifts it from the branch. There’s a darker spot on the bark next to the lid, and her heart stops for a moment in this sudden realization— all occurring within the micro second of lifting it just a few inches. The lid was slightly loose, and all night it dripped, one drop at a time, silently around the curve of the branch, pooling at it’s base, and then falling perfectly down. One drop at a time, from dusk to dawn. She actually saw the last drop fall in the moment that she lifted the canteen. Her eyes followed it down only to see it illuminate a shiny surface at the base of the tree. She was motionless for a moment, there was really nothing that could be done. 

Thought most of us have not been in the exact dire straights of our huntress, we have all had a moment or two or three like this in our lives. In fact, it is these kinds of moments that often give rise to much needed reflection. When that last scrap of physical hope is taken from us, and we are just left looking at our own hands, we usually find our vision zooming out, with nothing left between us and the present. Many sangha members will probably tell you that these moments are what compelled them to seek out a practice. Most people come to the ashram not because they have experienced the bliss of the inner self and want more of it, but because they have experienced the suffering of samsara and what to be done with it. 

And this same logic continues within the practice as well.  As Shambhavananda teaches in the intro to his book Spontaneous Recognition, “In my spiritual work I had major realizations at the death of a closely held ideal.” Realizations are usually what is left after an illusion is taken away. Which is in accord with the yogic tradition’s creed that we are all Shiva, covered in Maya, and that our practice is simply the peeling away of that illusion to reveal our divinity. Of course, we we usually aren’t willing to follow that edict unless circumstances for us to. 

The funny thing is that these types of sacrifices seem so terrible in the moment, but in hindsight, seem so trivial, or as Babaji says in the following quote “silly”, when compared to the reward they grant in exchange, as we will see with our huntress. As Shambhavananda teaches, it’s the very things that we cling to in life that cause us to suffer the most, “It is as though you are holding onto a big anchor at the bottom of the ocean. All you need to do is let go, and you will rise to the top. But we like our anchor, and we are very attached to it. We have put time and energy into creating our persona, identity, and limitations, which are the building blocks of our anchor. Our life has become a process of building and hanging on to this anchor. Spiritual growth has to do with the total annihilation of that process. On the one hand, it seems silly that we would not let go of that anchor; but on the other hand, to let go of it is the most terrifying thing in the world. That is the nature of surrender. It has to do with opening up to your limitations and simply releasing them” (SP,32)

Without the weight of her anchor, the huntress climbs down the tree, and quietly walks around it’s base to find an unfamiliar sight, an oval stone, sitting in a triangular base, with small offerings placed around it. The sight of the offerings causes a visceral reaction in her stomach, snapping her back in to reality, but before she could even reach for any of the small fruits, a mighty wind sprinted through the forest like a heard of a thousand gazelles running north, and the crown of her head felt as though someone were pulling her up lightly by her hair. Her hunger faded, her thirst quenched, and her vision cleared. She was suddenly, and completely present. And in that moment a divine being appeared, and there was nothing in her that questioned it, it was so clearly Shiva. Blue skin, dreadlocked hair piled high in a crown, a silent serpent wrapped around the neck and shoulders, and a slight smile that radiated for miles. 

The ‘death of this huntress’s closely held ideal’, ie. her canteen, had dripped in perfect succession, one drop at a time, from dusk till dawn, right on the crown of the Oval Shiva Shiva Lingum at the base of this sacred tree. This lingum had a strong connection, sustained by living practitioners for hundreds of years in this area, and so this offering was quickly received. Shiva was delighted by what he assumed was an all night ceremony in his honor. And Shiva could tell that this was a special ceremony, for someone had made one cup of water into an entire night’s offering— this was a truly humble and devoted practitioner.  Shiva was delighted to encounter her, and before the huntress could even utter a word, Shiva offered her not one, not two, but three boons. 

Shiva’s divine presence had uplifted her beyond the tugs of the physical dimension. Food and water would have been her only request, but luckily that did not occupy her mind while in the presence of the divine. What was peculiar is that nothing occupied her mind in that moment, yet she was not asleep, or distracted. She felt completely present, and in that presence, a deep sense of contentment and even a slight smile of bliss crossed her face. It had been a long time since she had smiled for no reason— she couldn’t ever recall doing it actually. 

We all grow up with the stories of genies in lamps, and we’ve all seen that story play out. Whatever wish one asks for eventually gobbles them up. In the Shiva Sutras this is more than a fairy tale, it is a reality that yogis have encountered for millennia. When we do our practice, it is easy to get sucked into the horizontal aspects of the practice, such as breathing more deeply to have a deeper experience, or repeating a mantra louder or faster— these approaches miss the point and have a limited yield. Similarly, when we do practice to produce a certain outcome it can often lead us off track— as Shambhavananda taught recently in satsang, we should do our practice to grow spiritually, that is the highest boon, the highest outcome we can reach for. And of course the Shiva Sutras agree, as they quote an even older passage from the Lakṣmī Kaulārṇava Tantra, “The one who is directed toward these limited yogic powers is carried away from the consciousness of Lord Śiva and is not capable of experiencing His nature.” (Lakṣmī Kaulārṇava Tantra 11). So any wish on the horizontal level will eventually become the exact thing that keeps us from experiencing our true Shiva nature. As Patanjali also tells us sutra 1.17, “Through self-enquiry the practitioner gains insight, but eventually all mental logic must come to an end in bliss. Following that is the comprehension that all is the Self (yoga)”. 

So what is the right boon? What is the wish that truly grants the infinite? Swami Rudrananda said that when he went to India, the enlightenment he found was not a heaven realm where everyone sits around drinking tea, but rather his enlightenment was the gift of learning how to work, how to practice. As Rudi often taught, he never wanted to work to attain a certain level, but rather, he wanted to find a state of being, a practice that grew him infinitely. The greatest boon is for the opportunity to practice, the support to practice, and of course a practice to practice.

This kind of wish, this kind of boon, is the almighty 3 jewels: A Teacher, teachings, and a sangha. With this boon we are able to transform our daily pursuits into spiritual growth. 

As Sutra 3.9 teaches, “Shiva’s real action is his being in his own universal God consciousness in each and every moment of revealing his differentiated forms”, which means that our practice must take place in the moment we live our life. This is Shiva’s real action, our real practice— to hold our attention within while moving through the forest’s of our lives. The 3 jewels are here to support us as we embark on this life long practice. It is an illusion to think that a boon could do the work for you— the only boon you need is the one you have already received: Real Teachings, a real teacher, and a real sangha. 

And as we put this boon into practice, our lives change. This is the meaning of the Shiva Natarjaj, or Natarajani— the dancer within that awakens when you put your spiritual practice first. When we put our practice at the forefront of our pursuits, we live our lives more skillfully, gracefully, and productively. But that’s only the beginning, what’s more important is that we grow spiritually through these pursuits. They don’t just end on the physical level, they also become fuel for an energetic one. 

We are the huntress. We chase, we are chased, deep into the forest of samsara. We spend our days in the dreaming state, day in and day out, clinging unsteadily to the tree branches of our minds. We suffer, but we survive, and we do it again. At some point, this suffering actually landed each one of us directly in the path of divine grace, and without consciously earning it, we have all been given a mighty boon, three mighty boons in fact: A living Teacher, authentic teachings and a practicing sangha. Maha Shivaratri is not just an opportunity for a new boon, but a time to utilize the one you have already been given. Meeting one genie in a lifetime is one more than we could ever expect, so why wait for another? Let’s put our boons to work: Om Namah Shivaya!