Figure of Shiva

Sculpture of the Hindu god Shiva on a twin throne of a lotus flower, accompanied by his partner, the goddess Parvati, sitting on his knee. Represented in his fierce manifestation as Bhairava, he is adorned with a necklace of human heads and holds various symbols in his 18 arms, such as the sword, the lotus flower, the bow, the drum or the “varja” (thunderbolt), and the “ghanta” (bell). The gods are flanked by their respective mounts: Nandi, Shiva's bull, and Shima, Parvati's lion.
Shiva is one of the main gods in Hinduism. He, Brahma, and Vishnu form a divine trinity in which they personify destruction, creation, and conservation, respectively. However, Shiva is a complex deity that holds these three concepts within himself: he is also a paradoxical deity, as he represents both antagonistic and complementary realities, such as destruction and creation. His wife, the goddess Parvati, is his “shakti” or feminine energy and the mother of his children, Ganesh and Skanda. Like Vishnu, Parvati is also a paradoxical goddess, and is associated with the concepts of nature and fertility, but also with death and destruction.
Shiva and Parvati dwell at the top of Mount Kailash in the Himalayas, which is where the name of the Kailasanatha temples devoted to this god comes from. Shiva is not only worshiped in Hinduism, but in Tantric Tibetan Buddhism, the principal school of this type of Buddhism, Vajrayâna (Diamond Vehicle), is derived from the Hindu word “vajra” (diamond), which can also mean thunderbolt or phallus. Practiced mainly across Tibet and Mongolia, Vajrayâna Buddhism retains many of the tenets of Hinduism, such as the representation of gods in their tantric form, as seen in this example. It also contains an element of sexual symbolism, based on the rejection of all dualism and on the fusion of masculine and feminine energies as a means of reaching Nirvana.