What’s your poison?
Shravan, the fifth month in the Hindu calendar, is the month when the “Shravan” star rules the sky. It is also the month of Lord Shiva. When samudra manthan — the churning of the ocean by gods and demons — took place, halahal ( poison) came out. The agreement between the gods and demons was that whatever came out during the churning of the ocean would be shared equally between them. However, when the poison emerged, neither the gods nor the demons were prepared to accept the poison, and decided to throw it away. But Lord Shiva prevented them, saying that the poison would destroy the world. To save the world, Shiva held the poison in his throat — if it went down his stomach he would have died and if it was thrown out, the universe would have been destroyed. So he decided to hold it in his throat, as a result of which his neck turned blue. From then on Lord Shiva is also called “Neelkanth”, blue throat.
All the gods, thereafter, started offering the water of the Holy Ganges to Lord Shiva to lessen the effect of the poison. Since this happened in the month of Shravan, Shiva devotees offer Ganga jal to Lord Shiva in this month. Spiritually, the churning of the ocean indicates contemplation of the mind. When the mind is contemplated upon, past incidents buried inside the subconscious mind come up. And so do negative feelings, like hatred, anger, greed, jealousy, enmity etc. like the poison that came out from the churning of the ocean.
Lord Shiva, by holding the poison in his throat, shows us that we should neither spit out negativities on others nor allow them to go down deep within us. We should hold on to them long enough and in a way that they neither affect us nor destroy others, and at the earliest opportunity neutralise these negativities with positive emotions. The action of neutralising the poison was denoted by the offering of Ganga jal to Lord Shiva by the gods. Monday’s deity being Shiva, all the Mondays during Shravan month ( Saavan somvaar) have special significance as Shiva is worshipped by japa ( chanting of panchakshri mantra “Om Namah Shivay”), abhishek ( offering water and milk to the shivling), observing vrat ( fast) and singing bhajans ( divine songs). These practices emanate positive emotions and help lessen the effect of our inner negativity.
Auspiciousness resides in our mind. Let us cleanse the mind during this Shravan month through positive emotions and spiritual practices such as meditation, contemplation, offering unconditional love, compassion, gratitude and selfless service, by and surrendering our ego at the feet of Lord Shiva. Sri Rameshji Jain is a modern age spiritual guru and founder of Poorna Ananda, a centre for spiritual evolution and joyful living. Visit
www. poornaananda. org