The Playful Moment
Parvati came up behind Shiva while he was sitting in meditation on Kailash and covered his eyes with her two hands.
The result was immediate and cosmic: Shiva's eyes are the sun and moon — sources of light for the universe. When they were covered, all light went out. The worlds were plunged into darkness.
The Third Eye
Shiva opened the third eye — the eye of fire in his forehead — and light returned. But the fire of that eye first struck wherever it looked, and in one account, a flame from it struck the Himalayas, whose snow began to melt. The rivers flooded.
In another and more famous version: Kama (the god of love) had been sent by the other gods to shoot an arrow of desire at Shiva, to draw him from meditation toward Parvati. Shiva opened his third eye at the wrong moment and the fire incinerated Kama.
Kama's wife Rati wept. Shiva, moved, promised that Kama would be reborn — and so he was, as Pradyumna, son of Krishna.
The Symbol of Fire-Knowledge
The third eye is Shiva's most distinctive symbol. It represents the fire of knowledge — the eye that sees through illusion, that burns away what is false, that perceives reality directly without the mediation of the ordinary senses.
It is the eye that destroyed Kama — desire — and that could, in an instant, dissolve the entire created world back into consciousness.