Sitting Shiva vs Dancing Shiva

So a Twitter friend (and if you’re not a Twitterite please read this) had been twittering it up about Dance of Shiva and how awesome it is.

And one of her Twitter friends sent her this in response.

Yes, they’d mixed up the Jewish ritual of mourning the dead with the mythical Hindu dance of destruction and new creation.

It happens.

More often than you’d think.

So let me set the record straight just for, you know, the record? Or whatever, to have something to link to the next time someone asks me in an email.

And luckily — what with me being both very, very jew-ey and Israeli and the #2 world Shiva Nata expert — I think I might just be the perfect person to ask.

The Jewish kind of Shiva vs the kind we talk about here on the blog

How you say it.

The Jewish kind of Shiva is pronounced SheeVA in Hebrew if you’re Israeli. It’s pronounced SHiva (with a short ‘i’) if you’re American.

The Shiva in “Dance of Shiva” is pronounced SHEEva.

What you’re actually referring to.

If you’re Jewish and you’re talking about sitting shiva, you’re referring to the seven days of mourning you observe when someone in your family dies. It’s a symbolic period of separation and transition in which to adjust to the new state of affairs.

People visit you and bring food and stuff. It’s customary not to engage the mourners in conversation unless they themselves initiate it. It’s about separations and distinctions and healing and all the other beautiful themes that are so alive in Judaism.

Whereas, if you’re on this blog, we’re talking about the Dance of Shiva.

The symbolic cycle of taking things apart so that new and better things can be formed. This is the SYMBOLIC power of the Hindu god Shiva. And I quote from my soon-to-be-published book on the subject:

Shiva is, of course, one of the principal deities of the Hindu religion.

Not only is he one of the biggies, he’s actually one of the Trimurti (the three biggest biggies), where in his role as the Destroyer he gets to hang out with Brahma the Creator and Vishnu the Preserver. Some people think of these three as separate, individual gods, while others understand them to be each symbolically representing one of the three primary aspects of the divine.

Shiva also gets to be the primary deity of Shaivism (it’s even named for him!), which is one of three of the most influential denominations in Hinduism. In the Siddha Yoga tradition (of which Kashmir Shaivism is a cornerstone), Shiva is less of a deity and more conceptual — a stand-in for the idea of Divine Source; the formless supreme principle that manifests the universe. Still, no matter how you choose to look at it, pretty impressive.

But before you freak out about all the god of destruction stuff, I also wrote this:

God of Destruction, you say. Doesn’t sound like much fun put like that, does it? In fact, it kind of sounds like we should be running for our lives in panic and terror.

Well, there are two ways you can look at destruction. You either have a Shiva who is a dark and angry god, highly feared and earnestly worshipped, spreading awe and terror in his wake. Or you say, sure, he may be dark, but it’s a purifying kind of darkness that destroys bad stuff like evil, ignorance, and death. And after all, Shiva, destruction, is the partner of Brahma, creation.

You get the idea. Creation and destruction go hand in hand; creation is the thing that is brought into being as a consequence of destruction. In Hinduism, death is practically synonymous with rebirth, and when one thing dies another one is created. Which means Shiva gets to be the destroyer who enables new creation. An ending making room for a new beginning.

So actually isn’t all that strange for the god of destruction to be dancing the dance of creation. But if none of this is working for you, you have my permission to try skipping over the angry Hindu god part of it and thinking about it in the symbolic sense.

Think “winter giving way to spring”, and “swords melting to be made into plowshares” and the whole destroyer thing gets a little less intimidating.

What I do — for my own mental state of calm — is substitute the word “deconstruction”.

Deconstruction holds the positive elements of destruction (power, taking things apart, releasing old bonds, making room for the new) without giving me that mental twitch that comes with the strong negative associations a lot of us have with destruction.

So there you have it. Shiva’s dance is the ongoing, eternal play between deconstruction and reconstruction. The rhythm of Shiva’s dance is that of the process of dissolution and new creation.

Patterns emerge and take shape only to be dissolved and then recreated and rewritten in a new form. And the beat goes on.

So yes, they are both about death.

And they are both about life.

The Jewish practice of sitting Shiva is about letting go. It’s about comfort. It’s about transition and processing and shifting. So yes, that is something they have in common.

One thing leaving. Another thing coming. Boundaries. Connections.

But if we stop playing with the symbolism and just look at them, nope. Totally different practices and different words that mean different things.

And the truth is that in my own life, which I live very deliberately in accordance with both Judaism and yoga, stuff comes up all the time where one appears to be in conflict with the other.

But for me it always comes back to questions of “What do I need right now?” and “What fits best with my path right now?” and stuff like that. I wish I had something more useful to give you as guidance than “stuff like that”.

Luckily, when you have something that appears to be a conflict or a contradiction, the best thing to do is to ask yourself “What do I need to know about this? Are there ways to resolve this that I don’t know about yet?”

And then put your Dance of Shiva DVD on and dance dance dance. Dance for ten minutes. Sit for ten minutes. You’ll get your answer when you need it. Promise.