Ashtamurti: Shiva in Everything
Earth, water, fire, air, space, sun, moon, soul
The Linga is the formless given form. Ashtamurti is the opposite move. Shiva is not only on the altar. He is the altar, the ash, the river the altar stands beside, the earth under it. This lesson teaches the eight forms in which the tradition says Shiva is already present everywhere.
A Drought in the Old Story
It is the summer of a drought year somewhere in central India, in the time the Shiva Purana was being told and retold around evening fires. A village potter named Bhanu sits on the dry mud of his courtyard. The wheel is still. The clay pile beside it is hard as stone. He has not made a pot in eleven days. He has been to the village Shiva temple every morning, lit a small ghee lamp, sat on the cool floor, and asked the same question.
Where are you, my Lord. The temple is full of you and the world is empty of you. Why is one half of life so close to you and the other half so far?
This is the question the Ashtamurti teaching answers. The lamp Bhanu lights is a small Shiva. The pot he cannot make is also Shiva. The river that has not come is Shiva. The sky waiting for cloud is Shiva. The sun that is too bright is Shiva. The moon he sees through the doorway at night is Shiva. The breath in his chest, going in and out as he asks the question, is Shiva. The awareness in him that knows it is asking is Shiva.
The Shiva Purana lists this as the eight forms of Shiva, and the lesson it teaches is the lesson the potter needed. Shiva is not only on the altar. The altar was a starting place. The world is the destination.
The Word Itself
Ashtamurti is two words pressed together. Ashta means eight. Murti means form, or more precisely, the visible shape a formless thing takes when it agrees to be seen. So Ashtamurti is the eight visible shapes of the same one Shiva.
This is not a list of eight different gods. The Shaiva tradition is careful here. There is one Shiva, the Mahadeva of every previous lesson in this course. The eight forms are eight doors into the same house. A Shaiva does not pick a favourite door. He learns to recognise that whichever door he is standing in front of, in any given moment, opens into the same room.