Yamaka in#193
That question was put to my wife, who answered, " Kannah, yes, we are Shiva worshipers. We worship lingam.. that's our tradition. I don't want to talk about it any further!"She herself does not know why lingam is worshiped.. and she says, "there are all sorts of ugly, obscene explanations... I don't know what's correct and what's not.. is very disgusting and I am very angry and upset... I don't want my son know about my discomfort".
I want knowledgeable people in this Forum address the question truthfully.
Yamaka in # 196
The potential audience being the 14 year old boys of Hindu parents in Houston, NY, LA, Chennai, Mumbai, Calcutta etc. in 2011! They expect to hear, most probably, the REAL reasons, religious rationale etc. They don't like any "white wash"! Lol.
Yamaka in # 200
I thought what we see is the phallus and vagina in the "Lingam", but I also learnt that it was "the interpretation of the West, whose brain is in between their legs" by people like Raju in this Forum. Therefore, I was not quite sure of the REAL explanation. I talked to my son about this. He said "Most of the Hindu students in my high school knew it as a "sex act" in full glare, and were giggling with other female students as to what the Meenakshi temple in Houston is showing... and I was not really sure of what was depicted in the Lingam.. that's why I asked Mom, who did not want to dwell on it, I understand her reluctance".
He continued, "My question is, Indian Society is very prudish about sex, sexuality and boys meeting girls in private etc..then how could they openly show a sex act in the temple and that too worship it in open? It's very paradoxical and very confusing! I read that Lord Siva is a God of Destruction and not Creation which Lord Brahma does! Then why worshiping Siva having sex with his Sakthi in the open? And, why can't they remove this Sex Act and replace it with the Dancing Nataraja?"
My wife thinks it's vulgar to show a Sex Act in the Temple, and worship it so openly.
She thinks there got to be a more Decent Explanation than this!
I leave this matter here, and maybe, others may choose to dwell on this matter of extreme importance to our youngsters growing up in big cities in the US or in India.
Wiki gives this:
The
Sanskrit term लिङ्गं
liṅgaṃ, transliterated as
linga, has diverse meaning ranging from gender and sex to philosophic and religions to uses in common language, such as a mark, sign or characteristic. Vaman Shivram Apte's Sanskrit [SUP]
[8][/SUP] dictionary provides many definitions:
§ A mark, sign, token, an emblem, a badge, symbol, distinguishing mark, characteristic;
§ A false or unreal mark, a guise, disguise, a deceptive badge;
§ A symptom, mark of disease
§ A means of proof, a proof, evidence
§ In logic, the
hetu or middle term in a syllogism
§ The sign of gender or sex
§ Sex
§ The male organ of reproduction
§ In grammar, gender
§ The genital organ of Śiva worshiped in the form of a Phallus
§ The image of a god, an idol
One of the several meanings for the word Lingam is - the genital organ. There is another meaning for that word and that is “A mark,sign,an emblem, a symbol, a distinguishing mark, characteristic”. In the ancient Hindu society’s evolution from worshipping the elements to worshipping anthropomorphically represented God there must have occurred a span when a section must have felt that the God entity can not be fully understood to represent it anthropomorphically. Yet in order to satisfy the need for some sort of a representation, they must have taken a spherical or cylindrical stone and used it to represent their god shiva (in many shiva temples the deity is not even a upright cylinder but just a spherical block sitting smug on the pedestal). Thus the stone became a Lingam-a mark, a sign, a token, a symbol for the entity called God. Thus Shivling means ‘indicative of Shiva’ and not the phallus of Shiva or any one else. In Sanskrit language the term ling is used in other places also to mean indicative of/the sign of. Thus we have the term pullingam meaning male gender and sthreelingam meaning female gender not male sexual organ and female genital. And we have the napumsakalingam which means neuter gender (not a neutral sexual organ!!). Hence the correct meaning of Shivling is “the stone indicative of Shiva”. Why the aniconic shivling became an anthropomorphic form called Nataraja can be discussed separately. Shivling, thus, is worshipped even today because it is an aniconic representation of the God idea. There is no need to feel awkward, defensive, uncomfortable or disgusting (as Mrs. Yamaka feels) about explaining the Shivling worship to our children or others. Yamaka, now your children can explain the real meaning so that their friends need not feel sexited by what they see in the Garbagriha of a Hindu temple in US.
Hindu religion is a very ancient religion in the world and like a very old Banyan tree, it has accommodated many schools of thought like the banyan tree supporting many parasitic organisms growing on its body. Thus you have various puranas written (by hindus and non-hindus) at various times giving many a twist and turn to the original interpretations or original ideas. These twisted and remoulded ideas too thrived side by side with the original ideas as in the case of our Banyan tree. This is the reason for the claim that Shivling on a pedestel with a groove for abhishekam water to flow represents a phallus and a yoni. (A curious young one would immediately ask “has the phallus penetrated the yoni or not and if penetrated is it a view from inside the Yoni or outside the yoni that you get and a lot more inconvenient Qs). As I said the western scholars who had always been less than honest in their comments on Hindu philosophy and cultural practices, could only see a phallus in the shivling. That is why I said they had their brains in the wrong place.
Adi Shankara in his Nirvana-satakam summarized the meaning of a linga thus:
I am all pervasive. I am without any attributes, and without any form. I have neither attachment to the world, nor to liberation (mukti). I have no wishes for anything because I am everything, everywhere, every time, always in equilibrium. I am indeed, That eternal knowing and bliss, Shiva, love and pure consciousness. The formless, genderless, attribute less source of the entire creation called a lingam. I do not think Sri Sankara would have said this without knowing what he was saying.
Swami Vivekanand argued that the
Shiva-Linga had its origin in the idea of the
Yupa-stambha —the sacrificial post, idealized in Vedic ritual as the symbol of the Eternal Brahman. In SV sampradhaya there is a belief that when yogis meditate on the Brahman in His Vyuha avatara forms (Vasudeva, Samkarshana, Pratyumna and Anirudhdha) they first meditate on the Yupasthamba’s leg. Yupasthamba has nothing to do with phallus. Swami Vivekananda further argued that the explanation of the
Shiva-Linga as a phallic emblem was brought forward by the most thoughtless, and was forthcoming in India in her most degraded times, those of the downfall of Budhdhism.
According to Swami Sivananda, the view that the Shiva Lingam represents the phallus is a mistake.
I think Adi Sankara, Vivekananda and Sivananda are erudite people who knew their religion far better than the Western scholars and that is the reason why I have quoted their views here.
I hope Mr. Yamaka would show this post to his wife and children so that they know the truth and feel confident to explain to their friends, the 14 year old boys of Hindu parents in Houston, NY, LA, Chennai, Mumbai, Calcutta etc. in 2011, who expect to hear, most probably, the REAL reasons, religious rationale etc.
This is neither an apology nor a “white wash”.
Cheers.
