Holding on to Bhagwan Shiva
Markandeya
The boy who held on at the door of death
The Puranas
Promised only sixteen years of life, a young devotee of Lord Shiva meets death by clinging to the Shivling and refusing to let go. What he holds on to turns out to be stronger than the noose that comes for him.
A short life, brightly lit
The sage Mrikandu and his wife Marudvati had no children, and they prayed long for one. In time they were offered a choice that no parent should have to make: a brilliant, devoted son who would live only sixteen years, or a dull son who would live a long life. They chose the gifted son, and accepted the price.
Markandeya was born, and he was everything the blessing promised, radiant and gentle and wholly devoted to Lord Shiva. His parents loved him and watched the years go by with a grief they could not always hide, because they alone knew the count. As the sixteenth year came near, they could keep it from him no longer, and they told him what had been settled before his birth.
The noose and the Shivling
Markandeya heard it the way a true devotee hears bad news: he turned to worship. On the appointed day he sat before a Shivling, wrapped his arms around it, and lost himself in the name of Lord Shiva, asking for nothing, simply holding on.
Yama, the lord of death, came as he must, riding his buffalo, his noose in his hand. He cast the rope to draw out the boy's life. But Markandeya was clinging to the Shivling, and so the noose fell around the boy and the symbol of Lord Shiva together. That, Yama could not do.
The Lord who would not be parted from him
From the Shivling Lord Shiva burst forth in anger that death should reach for one who had taken shelter in Him. He stopped Yama where he stood and would not let the boy be taken. The count of sixteen years was set aside by the One who set the years.
And Lord Shiva blessed Markandeya to stay sixteen forever, deathless, ageless, one of the chiranjivis who live on through the ages. The boy who was given the shortest of lives was given, instead, a life with no end at all, because of what he chose to hold on to when the noose came down.
Why it stays with us
Markandeya does not bargain with death or run from it. He takes hold of the Lord and does not let go, and that turns out to be the one grip death cannot break. The story sits behind the Mahamrityunjaya prayer that families still say for the sick and the frightened: not a charm against dying, but a holding-on to the One who is steadier than death.
