The Anger of Rudra

Anger makes the face red, the mouth and chin tight (with a clenched jaw), the eyes-narrowed, the fists become clenched, the legs become firmly planted or the body sits upright, the whole body shakes with increasing intensity, and the voice rises in volume. 

A researcher of affect, Nathanson, says that “people vary so much in their expression of anger.”  Nathanson worked to discover with his clients how they handled and expressed anger. He found that some people are always angry and others not at all and that some would explode and then be clear afterwards while others simmered for a long time. Some people would act out their anger with yelling and even hitting, while others clammed up and would shut down. When anger is studied in infants, it shows up as muscular contraction and an intensification of activity (as well as the standard facial pattern).^[1]

I have been working on recognizing and expressing my anger, which I have largely ignored and bottled up.  Our awareness and way of seeing things influences our experience. Our deluded perceptions distort our experience. What can Rudra teach?

Exploring the Vedic-Hindu Myth of Rudra

I have found that many western perspectives of myth place oneself inside the hero or main characters position in the myth. To do this in a Hindu myth would be either blasphemous or not understanding the inner meaning. In Hinduism, there is not a mythic hero journey in the same sense as some Greek originated myths and there is a long history of myth interpretation based on a 300 B.C. commentary on Vedic myth.

There are three levels to interpreting Vedic and Hindu myth: ādhidaivika, ādhiyajña and ādhyatmika. The ādhidaivika is the realm of understanding the deities in the myth; this is two-fold in that the deity is a limited anthropomorphic deity with symbolic images and it also correlates to a universal or archetypal energy that exists in the universe. These two aspects (what our westernized minds call two aspects) are one level of interpretation. The ādhyatmika is the internal meaning of the myth as it is seen inside ourselves. Rāvaṇa was a demon king who stole the wife of Rāma, where Rāma represents our rightful living and/or confidence (Sun), and Rāvaṇa represents the delusions of mind (Rāhu). The stealing of the wife (śakti), is the stealing of one’s personal power and creativity by the deluded mind. Here it can also be seen to represent a psychological ‘gatekeeper’ taking the power away from the good self in the case of early trauma. The myths taken out of the divine realm (ādhidaivika) become the internal realm (ādhyatmika) of many selves^[2]

The deities/universals are worshiped on the divine realm and meditated upon in the internal realm. The ādhiyajña is the level of interpretation needed for worship of the forms understood as deities. This can be interpreted from the divine realm as the ritual worshiping of a god/universal principle or as seen from the internal realm, it can be the internal methods in which one gets in touch and works with the energies inside of themselves represented by the myth. The myths are real actual happenings, and they are completely representative of the internal reality inside of us, a reflection of the macro-microcosm. It is an imaginal realism where there is an understanding that the reality inside is outside in the higher spheres and outside is inside in the human being. In the Vedic/Hindu approach, there is no putting oneself in the myth, one is composed of the myth. 

Śiva in is his ancient Vedic form of Rudra is the form of rage. The word raudra, which means ‘of Rudra’, is the word for rage in Sanskrit. He is the storm god, who when he gets angry rages a terrible storm and destroys everything.  The name Rudra means crying or howling. Myth says he was born from the anger of the progenitor, and sprang forth crying (rud). No one wanted to name him, he was the energy of violence, the hunter, the place of killing at the sacrifice, the slaughter of the battlefield. This can be symbolic of the way no one likes anger and violence, and people don’t want to face it. When the just born Rudra was asked why he was crying, he replied, “I want to be named.” He was then named, but he did not stop crying and asked again to be named- seven times, seven names. He represents our anger and the crying out for something to be recognized; a need to be seen and heard. 

In Vedic ceremony, Rudra was given offerings in sacrifice as a pacification. Once, he was not invited to a ritual of Dakṣa which was attended by all the gods (attended means they were all worshiped) and Rudra became furious and destroyed the sacrifice. He trampled Indra (the king of heaven), beat Chandra (the Moon), tore the arms off Savitṛ (a solar deity of creativity), plucked out the eyes of Bhaga (a solar deity of good fortune), took out the teeth of Puśan (a solar deity of thriving), etc. Most important is that he cut off Dakṣa’s head (later replaced by a goat’s head). The deities all lost important parts of themselves, Indra represents pride and he was trampled, the Moon represents our emotions and was beaten, Savitṛ represents the creative potential and he lost his arms. Dakṣa represents the ego, and he lost his head, the seat of rational thinking to be replaced by that of an animal. In the ego’s lack of recognition of Anger-Rage, it destroyed the beneficial aspects of the self, deformed them in some way. This can be seen as the destructive force that rage has in distorting the inner parts of the self.  

In this way, I get that not recognizing my anger as anger has been a distortion in my perception. By recognizing this, I feel it makes me much more whole and understanding of a few past situations in my life where there was a difference in opinion. I look forward to developing my recognition of anger, to be able to express it in a way that upholds the recognition of Rudra and his purpose. 

April 2018 Addition:
Someone asked me for a recommendation of Vedic planet mythology. I recommended Robert Svoboda's 'Greatness of Saturn'. They wrote me back a thank you and said that the previous books they had read listed off planet significations, not the archetypes. I replied:

Svoboda talks about mythology. My book focuses more on getting to the archetypal level. The concept of archetype is slightly different in the Vedic reality compared to the Jungian concept. The Jungians see archetypes in myth and interpret the archetype based on the myth. The Vedic realm understands archetype in myth- but see that as a derivative (a secondary arising of archetype, not the primary level of the archetype). We list off the various realms that the archetype works in, working to bring forth a conceptual realm of implicit understanding about the force of the archetype.   

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^[1] Donald L. Nathanson, Shame and Pride: Affect, Sex, and the Birth of the Self (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1992), 102.

^[2] PVR Narasimha Rao says it slightly different, “When nirukta says that Veda has adhiyajnika, adhidaivika and adhyatmika meanings, it is 3 perspectives rather than 3 layers. These 3 perspectives are: (1) how supreme Self appears as multiple selves (2) how supreme Self appears as multiple ethereal beings operating through those selves, (3) how Self appears as interactions among those beings.”