Siva: his forms, acts and qualities

The eight qualities describe perfections Siva possesses by nature, without acquiring them through learning or release from bonds.

En gunam, எண்குணம், means eight qualities. In this Saiva account they express the completeness of Pati, the Lord. Our knowledge grows, our power meets obstacles and our happiness changes. These descriptions turn our attention towards a Lord whose knowing and helping are free of those limitations.

The Tamil terms and their Sanskrit counterparts below follow Siddhanta teaching. Read the meaning alongside the name: the list concerns the Lord's nature, not eight accomplishments He had to earn.

✦A familiar couplet

Tirukkural 9 speaks of the one with eight qualities. Saiva readers bring this account of the Lord to the couplet; the couplet itself does not spell out the eight.

The verse brings knowledge back to reverence. To name a perfection and to bow before the Lord who possesses it are connected acts. The list is meant to deepen worship, not merely furnish a definition.

✦Eight gathered into three

The same teaching gathers the eight under sat, chit and ananda: being, consciousness and bliss. Under sat it places purity and natural freedom from bonds. Under chit it places independence, innate awareness, complete knowing, abundant grace and unlimited power. Under ananda it places limitless bliss.

This grouping gives us a shorter way of holding the eight together. It does not divide Siva into three pieces. His knowing is not separated from His power, nor His grace from His fullness. When He helps a soul, He does not supply a lack in Himself.

Formless, form-and-formless and formed describe how Siva is approached; none confines Him within a body made by karma.

Siddhanta uses arupa, arupa-rupa and rupa: without form, with form and without differentiated bodily form, and with a recognisable form. The corresponding terms nishkala, sakala-nishkala and sakala belong to the same teaching vocabulary.

An image with a face and limbs is rupa. The Sivalinga is approached as arupa-rupa: there is a visible form, but it does not delineate a human body. Arupa points beyond such visible differentiation. Formlessness does not mean absence, and a visible form does not mean that the Lord has been enclosed within its dimensions.

✦Laya, bhoga and adhikara

Siddhanta teaching relates these to three states of operation. Their names describe divine repose, readiness and active administration. They do not tell of a Lord who was incomplete and then developed.

Keep the Lord distinct from the material supports through which He acts. The 36 Tattvas explains why a pure tattva bearing a divine name is not identical with Pati beyond the tattva order. This distinction matters when the names Sadasiva and Isvara occur in an account of divine operation.

✦Grace and knowledge as His form

Siva's divine form is spoken of as grace and knowledge, rather than a Maya body imposed by karma. A sacred image made of stone or bronze has a material substance; this claim concerns the Lord's divine embodiment, not the composition of the sculptor's work.

Tiruvundiyar, verse 1, begins with the hard-to-know formless reality coming in form and giving itself. That is the direction of the teaching: the initiative comes from the Lord. His approachability is a gift to the soul.

Bhoga, vega and yoga forms make visible the granting of experience, the removal of obstruction and the gift of liberating knowledge.

Here bhoga belongs to a second classification: bhoga, vega and yoga. It groups recognisable forms according to their purpose. This is distinct from the laya–bhoga–adhikara account just considered. The same word can serve different explanatory groupings.

The grouping gives the examples their direction. Bhoga forms concern the experience the Lord provides; they do not imply that Siva is driven by a need for pleasure. Vega forms are explained as marakkarunai, fierce mercy: correction serves the removal of what obstructs the soul. Yoga forms concern the removal of ignorance and the giving of knowledge that leads towards release.

These are examples, not an exhaustive catalogue of every sacred form. Individual stories and temple settings bring their own details. The classification helps us ask why a form is taken before attempting to explain every object in its hands.

✦The same grace in different encounters

The teaching links Ammaiyappar with the possibility of devotion in household life. It links fierce forms with the ending of evil and obstruction, and yoga forms with teaching. That gives the reader a practical distinction: providing experience, correcting its misuse and opening the way beyond bondage can all express care for the soul.

None of this makes human anger a divine model to imitate. The claim concerns the Lord's freedom from the ignorance and self-interest that distort our actions. Remember His qualities while reading His deeds. Complete knowing and abundant grace belong to the fierce form as well as to the seated teacher.

Creation, preservation, dissolution, concealment and grace provide experience and bring the soul towards freedom.

The five acts are a third way of considering Siva's work. Here the question is what happens to the soul's field of life, and why. The presiding deities in the table follow Siddhanta teaching. Their assigned functions belong within the one Lord's governance.

The soul is not created when its body appears, and it is not destroyed when the body is withdrawn. Creation and dissolution concern its equipment and environment. Likewise, rest from bodily activity is not release: the bond's obscuring power has still to be removed.

✦Concealment and grace

Concealment, Tirodhanam, is easy to mistake for abandonment. Siddhanta places it within the provision for the bound soul. While the soul's knowledge is limited, it receives instruments, acts and meets the fruits of its deeds. The Lord has not ceased to sustain it because it does not recognise Him.

Grace names the fifth act specifically, but it also names the merciful purpose running through all five. The teaching therefore gives reasons as well as names. It asks why worlds are maintained and withdrawn, not only which deity is associated with each act.

The five presiding names do not divide the work among five independent ultimate Lords. Nor should Rudra, named here for dissolution, be used to limit Siva the supreme Lord to destruction alone. The whole sequence concerns His care for souls.

For the dance that gathers these acts into one image, continue to Nataraja. Its drum, flame and gestures have their own explanation there.

The five faces join divine action, direction, element and mantra in a form used for worship and contemplation.

Sadasiva is worshipped in a form with five faces: Sadyojata, Vamadeva, Aghora, Tatpurusha and Isana. Each face has a corresponding brahma mantra, carrying the same name. “Five brahma mantras” names this set of sacred utterances; it does not mean five copies of the deity Brahma in the creation column above.

The directions below follow Kamika Agama, Purva 4.341–342. The elemental associations occur in Siva Purana, Vayaviya Samhita, latter half, 3.11–15. Read them as correspondences for worship, rather than material ingredients out of which Siva is assembled.

Taken together, these associations give a way of contemplating the five faces through the five acts and elements. Their force lies in the whole relationship, not a claim that the Lord can act only in one direction. The name of each face also names its brahma mantra; the full formulas belong to the practice in which they are received and used.

✦The five syllables

In the elemental correspondence of Na–Ma–Si–Va–Ya, the syllables stand for earth, water, fire, air and space respectively; through those elements they can be related to the five faces in the table. This is another use of the fivefold pattern. It should be kept distinct from the account of Siva, grace, soul and bonds in The five syllables.

Different ritual and textual accounts can give different arrangements. An order beginning with Isana reverses an order beginning with Sadyojata; changing the order of a list need not change the associations themselves. Where the directions differ, the particular textual account matters.

The account of the twenty-eight Agamas revealed through the five faces is already given in The Agamas. Follow that page for the revelation account and its different textual arrangements.

Extraordinary powers are distinct from the Lord's eight qualities and do not replace liberation through grace.

The eight siddhis are traditionally described as extraordinary attainments: anima, minuteness; mahima, greatness; laghima, lightness; garima, heaviness; prapti, reaching where one wills; prakamya, obtaining desired experiences; isitvam, lordly command; and vasitvam, bringing others under one's sway. The commentary on Periya Puranam 3565, concerning Tirumular, explains these powers while saying that Siva yogis do not seek them.

They must not be confused with the eight qualities with which we began. Siva's perfections are natural to Him; a siddhi is spoken of as an attainment. Siddhanta's goal is release from bondage and life in Siva's grace. An unusual ability does not by itself establish that the root obscuration is gone.

Read divine form with the texts on grace, and keep each table beside the source that gives its arrangement.

• Tirukkural, Tamil text: couplet 9, the one with eight qualities.
• Sivagnana Siddhiar, Tamil text: Supakkam 58–67 and 70–85, on form, grace, knowledge and operation.
• Kamika Agama, Purva: 4.341–342, the five-face directions.
• Siva Purana, Vayaviya Samhita, latter half, chapter 3: verses 11–15, the faces and elements.
• Dancing with Siva, glossary: the Nataraja and Namah Sivaya entries, for the act and syllable correspondences.
• Periya Puranam 3565, Tamil text and commentary: the short explanation of the eight siddhis.

How Siva helps offers the first introduction to the five acts. Tiruvundiyar returns to the Lord's gift of Himself, and Sivaprakasam keeps divine activity directed towards the soul's ripening and freedom.