Saiva Siddhanta - An Introduction
Saiva
Siddhanta is the path of personal experience of Siva consciousness
and self-realization. Gurudeva
Suvaya Subramuniyaswami is the foremost exponent and teacher
of Saiva Siddhanta in the West - a self-realized Western spiritual master
of an age-old Saivite tradition.
Saiva Siddhanta is a path that places stress on the all- embracing nature
of human spirituality, that is, it seeks to reveal that every dimension
of life is sacred. It teaches seekers to see God everywhere, and in everyone,
inside and outside ourselves. It is a tolerant path, accepting wholeheartedly
the many ways of seeking God, and denying emphatically that any path is
the one or only path.
Some of the practices found in Saiva Siddhanta, are a synthesis of Vedic
and Agamic insight. Some of the practices include:
- Bhakti Yoga - devotion to God, Siva, through acts of worship
and observing certain acts of moral conduct.
- Karma Yoga - serving God selflessly through your thoughts,
words, and actions.
- Raja Yoga - involving yogic exercises and meditation.
- Jnana Yoga - the path of intense mysticism and wisdom, which
comes from the direct knowledge of the divine as personal experience
transcending all other knowledge. A catechism for Saiva Siddhanta called
 Dancing
with Siva is available.
Gurudeva was born on January 5, 1927, in Oakland, California, and grew
up near Lake Tahoe. He began studying yoga and meditation as a youth,
and spent many hours in meditation daily. In 1947, at the age of twenty,
he traveled to Sri Lanka, renounced all worldly possessions, and trekked
to remote caves to practice yogic disciplines until he attained the enlightenment
of Self-Realization. Two months later he met Siva Yogaswami at his ashram
in Columbuthurai, who initiated him into the Saivite Hindu religion (Siddhar
line) and gave him his spiritual name Subramuniya. It was Siva Yogaswami
who gave him instructions for his life mission as a spiritual teacher
to the West.
|
