Shiva Mahimna Stotra

            Shiva Mahimna Stotra is a hymn filled with Lord Shiva’s glories and enlightening thoughts which help us understand the Ultimate Reality and build our character. It was written by Shri Pushpadanta. He was an angel and a devotee of Lord Shiva. He was well-versed in singing and literature.

            There is a story telling us why Shri Pushpadanta wrote this hymn. Being an angel, he could remain invisible to human beings and fly around the world freely. His greatest joy was to offer beautiful flowers to Lord Shiva every day. Once when he was flying over the garden of King Chitraratha, he observed that there were very special and beautiful flowers growing there that he had not seen. He thought of offering these flowers to Lord Shiva. But the garden was protected by high security. He thought that he could be invisible, and he could fly, so he had nothing to worry about stealing the flowers. He invisibly entered the garden, quietly collected the flowers he liked, and offered them to Lord Shiva. This continued for a few days.

The king was also offering flowers to Lord Shiva. But he found that he was not getting the special flowers that he loved to offer. Upon inquiry, he found from the guards that someone was stealing these flowers lately and they were unable to find the thief. The king observed that there was no flow in the security. He was convinced that this was the job of an angel. He had an idea.  He asked the guards to collect respectfully the flowers and the bilva leaves already offered to Lord Shiva in his temple and spread them around those flower plants from which the thief was stealing regularly. The guards did exactly what the king had told them to do and that night they remained awake hiding behind the bushes.  Angel Pushpadanta came invisibly and started stealing the flowers. But he found that he was losing his power to remain invisible and now all can see who he was. The guards caught him and told him that he lost his power because he insulted Lord Shiva by stepping on and going over the offered flowers and bilva leaves to Lord Shiva. Pushpadanta’s heart was filled with pain knowing that he had insulted his beloved Lord Shiva and he was engaged in wrongdoing. In order to please Lord Shiva and regain His love, he started composing a hymn.  With this hymn, Shri Pushpadanta became immortal and one of the most beloved devotees of Lord Shiva.  Over a period of hundreds of years, by reciting this hymn, millions of devotees had a vision of Lord Shiva and their souls have been uplifted. 

In his famous speech given on September 11, 1893, at the Chicago World Parliament of Religions, Swami Vivekananda said the following¹:

“I will quote to you, brethren, a few lines from a hymn which I remember to have repeated from my earliest boyhood, which is every day repeated by millions of human beings: ‘As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee.’” This is the seventh shloka of Shiva Mahimna Stotra.

The following incident from the life of Sri Ramakrishna² gives us a clear picture of how people had a vision of Lord Shiva by repeating the Shiva Mahimna Stotra.

 “One day, the Master (Sri Ramakrishna) entered one of the Shiva temples of Dakshineswar and began to recite the Shiva Mahimna, a hymn in praise of the Deity. He was beside himself in ecstasy as he recited the following verse: “O Lord! Imagine if the ink is prepared by dissolving a blue mountain into an ocean, the biggest branch of the celestial tree becomes the pen to write, and the earth the writing paper, and if by taking all these things, Saraswati, the goddess of Learning, writes your glories forever, even then she cannot describe your glories.”

“While the Master was reciting the above verse, he intensely felt the glory of Shiva in his heart, and he lost himself. He forgot the hymn, the Sanskrit language of the hymn, the order of the verses, and so on, and repeatedly cried aloud, “O Lord, how can I express Your infinite glory?” Tears poured down his cheeks, chest, and clothes, finally dampening the floor.”

Let us sincerely study this great hymn, Shiva Mahimna, and uplift ourselves spiritually and asked Lord Shiva to give us His vision to bless our life and be free from all bondages. With this vision our life will be meaningful, we will attain great fulfillment, and we will experience infinite bliss which cannot be obtained by any worldly object, person, or pleasure.  

[1: Chicago Address by Swami Vivekananda, Advaita Ashrama, Kolkata, fifth edition, 2015, page 20.

2: Sri Ramakrishna and His Divine Play by Swami Saradananda, translated by Swami Chetanananda, page 487.]

First, we will salute Lord Shiva with the following shloka:

Meaning: I salute Lord Shiva who is peaceful, auspicious, and the cause of the creation, preservation, and dissolution of the universe. O Lord Shiva! I surrender myself to you. May I realize you.

Reflections:  Lord Shiva’s form is serene, peaceful, and auspicious. By meditating on this form, we also acquire the same qualities. Lord Shiva, as Brahman, the Ultimate Reality, is the cause of the creation, preservation, and dissolution of the universe. There is no other cause for these activities. This Brahman is our true identity which we refer to it as Atman.

For our spiritual development, we have to surrender our ego which is formed by our body and mind, and the fundamental ignorance of our true nature. We pray to God to realize that our true nature is not different from God. 

Meaning: This is Shiva Mahimna Stotra composed by Shri Pushpadanta.

(Meaning of Shloka – 1): “O Shiva, the remover of all sufferings, I am ignorant of your infinite glories. If my hymn is improper, then even the hymns sung by Brahma and other knowledgeable people are also improper because no one has completely fathomed your glories. If the hymn sung by each one according to one’s limited intellect is permissible, then my effort to compose this hymn is not an exception.”

Reflections: No one can describe God’s infinite glories. Take, for example, our eyes. Go deeper to understand how the eyes function. The eyes take pictures that are registered inside us as upside-down images. Then the senses encode all the pictures into messages and then send them to the brain. The brain then puts them together as the things look outside and sends messages to the body to react according to the mind’s feelings. Cameras came from studying how the eyes function. Science has studied some parts of the functions of the eyes, but if we ask the experts, they will say that after some point they don’t know many things about the eyes.

The greatest mystery is how life appears in the mother’s womb. Every day several research papers are published. Each one solves a few problems but raises many other questions. As our knowledge grows, so does our awareness of our ignorance. Thus, God’s glories are infinite and our finite minds cannot fathom them.

If we pray to God sincerely, then God listens to our prayer. God will ignore all our imperfections in our language and expressions.