Maha Shivratri or Maha Sivaratri or Shivaratri or Sivaratri (Night of Shiva or "Great Night of Shiva") is a Hindu festival celebrated every year on the 13th night/14th day in the Krishna Paksha (waning moon) of the month of Maagha (as per Shalivahana) or Phalguna (as per Vikrama) in the Hindu Calendar (that is, the night before and day of the new moon). The festival is principally celebrated by offerings of Bael (Bilva) leaves to the Lord Shiva, all day fasting and an all night long vigil.
Here the evening began with leaving the Dayananda Ashram at around 630pm for the alnight celebration. We climbed out of the ashram at the gates to enter Sivananda Ashram. Through the gates and up, up, up the stairs to the temple at the ashram. The charming, clanging and drone of the bells rang throughout the night preceding the chanting of a few hundred people gathered in the temple. Surrounded by flowers and two gaint banana plants which formed an entrance to the inner temple (the banana plant is auspiciously used to symbolize prosperity), the gaint marble temple was surrounded with pictures of Sivananda in all his glory...
Throughout the night bhajans and devotional hymns to Siva were shared and the melodies between the musicians had that magical quality of other worldness about them. The priests in the inner temple with the deities of Siva, the Siva Lingam, Krishna & Radha, Ganesha and others were intoxicated in chants that had been going since the evening before. Flowers and offerings, aarti and the chiming, the ringing of the giant bells took place numerous times with an intense rhythm and sound that reverberated throughtout every cell of one's body.
The lines would then form so as to give individual offerings and receive prasad from the temple priests. This carried on and on until the final celebatory offerings at 430am with the wave of joy, the requests of prayers and wishes to be bestowed on each and everyone's intimate request to Lord Siva - to destroy all that in one's life that is preventing the evolution and growth towards the fullness of life and the reaching of one's potential...
Next the lines cued to the dining hall where a full, and I mean full, prasad of food was given. Tali plates were heeped with various dishes and I did my very best to consume it all without waste and the understanding of this precious gift...
Manisha, Subash and I walked back from Sivananda Ashram to Dayananda Ashram and the 25 minute walk was a reprieve from the night's activity with time to settle the beauty shared by all...
I look forward to next year already.......
xoxo
Om Namah Sivaya
Jennifer
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