Sivanandalahari of Sankaracarya

The Sivanandalahari of Adi Sankaracarya, like its twin, Saundaryalahari, is a poem of intense devotion, as noted for its poetic skill as for its spiritual fervour. God cannot be conceived of, meditated upon or loved with devotion in the abstract. To love God, the one ultimate reality, indefinable, ineffable, eternal, omnipresent and immanent, the primal cause - as the Brahma Sutras put it - from which the cosmos is born, maintained and dissolved, God has to be conceived of as the Father - Mother, inseparable as word and meaning - in the immortal analogy of Kalidasa. This is the conception of Siva - Sakti, Father - Mother, who are in themselves one, the embodiment of truth, goodness and beauty and are Being, Consciousness and Bliss, Sat - City - Ananda. Mythology and metaphysics, legend and poetry have enveloped this Father - Mother image of God in the magic of love, devotion and adulation.