Life can be fun. Life can also be painful. Sometimes we wish to experience all the exitement of life. But then, we experience sorrow and frustration. We wish to withdraw from life. Our ancestors experienced this too and concluded that there are two ways to live life: as a hermit who steps back and contemplates on the nature of the world and as a householder who stays in the world and experiences all it has to offer fearlessly. Our ancestors visualized the hermit as Shiva, the male form of divinity, or God, and the householder as Shakti, the female form of divinity, i.e., the Goddess. Shiva does not want to be a father and to deal with the trials and tribulations of worldly life. Shakti wants to be a mother and to engage with all things worldly, but she knows she can’t do so with Shiva’s support and participation. From this tension between hermit and householder, God and Goddess, is born Ganesha, his animal head representing material joys and his human body representing spiritual bliss. In Ganesha, God and Goddess attain balance, material pleasure and spiritual wisdom in harmony.
- by Devdutt Pattanaik from the book "99 thoughts on Ganesha"
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