One cannot deny the truth that many are the paradoxes, impossible of resolution, in all fields. Extremes of excess or of lack, find a fertile ground both in history and in the myths of India. The clearest and most obvious case is that of the god Shiva. He forms part of the Indian Trinity (Trimurti). His name means “the auspicious one”, the one who brings good omen, the beneficial and the alluring one. He, the great god, appears before whoever approaches him, as a perfect synthesis of the old prehistoric, Dravidian India: the lord of the beasts and forests, with the later Sanskrit and Hindu deity of the great cities and temples. Through the mythology, Shiva sometimes reminds one of Janus, after whom January the first month of the year is named. He like Janus is the god of beginnings and duality and time, whose double face looks to the past and the future.

The paradoxes of Shiva, in effect, incarnate destruction and creation, for which the disappearance of the old, of the exhausted, is necessary so the new and the rejuvenated can take its place. And nothing expresses this better than Shiva Nataraja! Yes, here in India, I always had Shiva in mind, he being the Lord of Change, the eternal dancer who renews the world, who destroys it and recreates it almost instantly, with each movement and the next. Yes, sudden and unforeseen changes, like the one that had just occurred to me, had much to do with him. Besides, we were at the beginning of the year!

Lord of Death, but also of life and birth, Shiva is the Hindu deity par excellence, of transit, who looks towards extremes. In the Mahabharata he is depicted as having three eyes, the third being the one with which he destroys desire (Kama), which tries strongly to tempt him and end his prolonged asceticism. Soon, the gods, unable to endure such a prolonged abstinence, manage to soften him so that he rekindles desire from the ashes he had consigned it to, in order that life may continue. To which he finally accedes.

Among the hundred or even a thousand names of Shiva, according to Linga Purana, and ten thousand according to Mahanyasa, he appears in mythology as the great Lord of the Gods, Maheshvara, the creator of the primordial sound OM, Omkara. He is indeed Mahabaleshwar, the immovable Lord, the immutable one, although he is also present, without there being any contradiction in it, as Nataraja, the perpetual dancer, who with his dance constantly recreates and transforms the cosmos. Among his almost infinite titles is Guheshvar, lord of the deep caves, although he is also known as Kedar, and as Girisha, being in both cases the sovereign of the summits. The deep and the elevated are not contradictory for him! The summit and the abyss constitute his very nature. He is, at the same time, the one who terrifies Bhishma, and the one who infuses serenity, Aghora. In the same manner that he is Maithuneshvar, the lord of intercourse, of endless sex even though he is Gambhiresh, the ascetic, the austere renunciate of lust. Likewise, he is known in this sense as Apamnidhi, the lord of the seminal fluids, even though he is also Kamanashe, the relentless destroyer of desire, and especially Yogesh, the lord of yoga and restraint. In one of his best known epithets, as the propitious, the benevolent, he is Shankar, but he is also Bhairava, the destroyer, the annihilator. Thus, Shiva is the head of the household, Grihapati, owner of the home, and at the same time he is Bhikshatan, the beggar. This immeasurable deity is Tamasopati, the lord of inertia, of passivity, while also of fire, and lava, Pavaka, besides being wind and storm, Marutta. He is all that and also the ever beautiful, Nityasundara. At the same time, he is the terrible, Rudra, and the annihilator, Sarvatapana. And he is the Supreme Reality, which transcends the apparent opposites.

Attempting to decipher these legends and epithets at the beginning of the 21st century with our Aristotelian and western rationality, governed as they both are by the principle of non-contradiction, is something that makes the most asserted certainties falter and seems to put everything into question. At a deeper layer of their meaning, we are not told that opposites are exact contraries at an identical point and place, but that Reality itself may have different manifestations and angles, which, although apparently “contradictory” to the senses, does not ultimately turn out to be so in transcendent consciousness. It is not an empty game of words! For at a higher plane, both opposites bend to touch each other, establishing a flow between them, intense as a ray. Seen from an integrative perspective, closer to the heart than to the mind, they are not exactly the affirmation and categorical denial of the same, but rather something which somehow complements each other. Intuition, not reason, in a cyclical dynamics, even in such different presentations, binds them and makes them interdependent as a natural continuity, such as the valley and the summit. Something like the burn caused by ice, “the opposites are reconciled without destroying.” Only thus can you be the lord of desire and renunciation. He is! He dances, and with him the whole cosmos does, achieving the infinite weight of its matter, it yet has the lightness of a swirl of his dance.

[Niyogi Books has given Fair Observer permission to publish this excerpt from City of Ravens: Paradoxes of Contemporary India, Carlos Varona Narvión, translated by Sonya Surabhi Gupta, Niyogi Books, 2025.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.