The Indo-American Foundation of Arizona is going to organize Maha Shivaratri on February 24th, 10 a.m. at Ekta Mandir 2804 W Maryland Ave, Phoenix, AZ 85017

The Temple will be open from 9 a.m. to midnight and various pooja and events will be organized.

The Temple will be also conducting Bhajans, Mahamrutyunjaya Homam, Rudrabhishek and arrangements are being made for the ‘Maha Prasadam’ to be distributed to the devotees.

Interested devotees can contact these numbers to participate in the Bhajans:

Event Chair: Venkatesh Gurumurthy: 480 381 9976

Event co-chair: Kamlesh Patel: 602 465 5728

Priest Sudarshan ji: 602 320 3460

Mahendra Devagania: 602 708 0733

KN Jagannath: 602 867 0673

Lokesh Joshi: 480 438 6776

Sudhir Kalra: 623 414 8248

Subhash Thathi: 928 952 5062

Jagdish Sagar: 480 235 5001

Significance of Maha Shivaratri:

Lord Shiva is known by many names, “Neelkant”, “Mahadev” or Bholenath, Lord is considered to be the fiercest God of our religion, he is the “God of Destruction” and as well as the kindest god, who grants any boon to his devotees.

So we celebrate one day dedicated for him ever year on 13th night and 14th day of the month Phalguna (Magha).

There are various stories in Puranas that describes the origin of this festival. Here are a few of them.

During the milk samudra manthan, a pot of poison emerged from the ocean that terrified the Devas (Gods) and Asuras (Demons) as the poison was capable of wiping out the whole world. Both Devas and Asuras sought help from Lord Shiva, who then swallowed the whole poison. Seeing this, his wife Parvathi hold on his neck to avoid the poison to go into the body and Lord Vishnu closed his mouth to avoid it from spilling. The poison got frozen in his throat which made it blue in color therefore he was given the name Neelakantha, the blue-throated one. Shivaratri is the celebration of this event by which Shiva saved the world.

According to another legend, a story explains the all night worship of Shiva on Shivaratri. Once there was a poor tribal man, who was a great devotee of Lord Shiva. He once went deep inside a forest to collect firewood. But, he lost his way while returning back to his home. As darkness fell the devotee heard the growls of wild animals. Being terrified he climbed onto a tree for shelter. He was afraid that he would doze and fall off the tree. To stay awake all night the devotee decided to pluck a leaf from the branches at a time and drop it, while chanting the name of Lord Shiva.

At dawn he realized that he had dropped thousands of leaves onto a Shiva Linga to keep himself awake,

The devotee plucked single leaf at a time from the tree and dropped it below which he had not seen because of the dark.

The tree happened to be a wood apple or bel tree. This unwitting all-night worship pleased Lord Shiva, by whose grace the devotee was rewarded with divine bliss.

This story is also recited on Mahashivaratri by devotees on fast. After observing the all-night fast, devotees eat the Prasad offered to Shiva.

There is one more story that can be a possible reason for the origin of the all-night worship. Being a moonless night, devotee worship the Lord Shiva, who wears the crescent moon as an adornment in his hair.

AMandeep