ॐ नमः शिवाय is one of the unique prayer / Chant / मन्त्र / Mantra / Incantation / Hymn / Syllable to salute or pray Lord Siva or Mahadev, who is one of the deities among trinity, operates the process of transformation of the universe.
This mantra literally means:
I, the Individual Soul salute my Supreme Soul.
“Om” = Supreme Soul or “Parabrahmmam”; “Namah” = Salute; Shivaya = to the Lord Shiva!
I Salute to the Supreme Soul Siva!
The name “Siva” is formed from the root word “Sivam” means Auspiciousness and which refers luck, fortune, delight, satisfaction, transformation, renewal, destruction, salvation etc.
Here, luck, fortune and delight indicate the results of our righteousness actions in the past life and births; satisfaction indicates the comforts attain from the righteousness actions in the life; transformation indicates the action of individual souls to leave a body and take another to complete the rebirth cycle for the salvation; renewal indicates the same meaning of transformation and it is the action of individual souls to renew its position by changing the physical body; destruction is always being wrongly interpreted based on its direct meaning! The actual meaning of destruction is transformation only; the house is constructed from the destructed things or materials such as rocks, sand, wood etc. or the intake food of any beings are from the destruction of some plants or animals or birds or the body of any living things, this destruction is just for the creation of the new cells of the beings who intakes these as food; so the destruction happens just for the creation or for the reconstruction or for the renewal or for the transformation.
Lord Siva transforms the beings and things for their rebirths or evolutions for the existence of the universe.