Mark W. Muesse

“The problem with trying to find your happiness through avoidance is the nature of reality. Reality simply does not allow us to evade unwanted experiences. Sure, we might be able to escape a few {...] but the evasive life often comes at a cost, like having to live your life in terror. Even if we can successfully ward off some terrifying experiences, we can not advert them all. Particularly, the most unpleasant ones: sickness, old age and death. If our strategy has been to flea unpleasant circumstances, when they come to meet us - as they surely will - our suffering will be great indeed.”
― Mark W. Muesse

“Śiva is both the creator and destroyer of the universe, movement and tranquility, light and darkness, male and female, celibate and promiscuous. These paradoxes serve to symbolize the limitlessness and freedom of the divine and suggest that what we might ordinarily consider oppositions are, in fact, closer than we think. These divine dimensions are illustrated in the images of Śiva as Mahāyogi, the Lord of the Dance (Natarāja), and Half- Woman Lord. The image of Śiva as the Great Yogi accents Śiva’s tranquil, ascetic aspect, providing a model for many Śaivites who seek to practice asceticism. The Natarāja image depicts Śiva’s cosmic dance during the auspicious occasion of the Mahashivaratri, the great night of Śiva, when he dances to dispel the ignorance of the night. He holds a drum and a flame; with the drum, he sounds the world into existence, and with the flame, he destroys it in order to create another. [...] The Hindu images of divine, both anthropomorphic and aniconic, function symbolically to point beyond themselves to ultimate, infinite reality.”
― Mark W. Muesse, Great World Religions: Hinduism