Is there a difference between Shiva and Krishna?

Following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Questioner (Q): What is the difference between Shiva and Krishna? What is the symbolic difference?

Acharya Prashant (AP): Shiva is more fundamental than Krishna.

Krishna contains a lot of both Shiva and Shakti. So unless you are watchful, you will get confused. Shiva is simple and pure. Shiva has the benefit of just being Shiva, with Shakti expressed totally as a different entity, which though emanating from Shiva, yet is very different from Shiva.

In Krishna, you find Shiva and Shakti both and you do not know which is which; you do not know what is what.

Q: So, Shakti is more into the world…

AP: Yes.

Shiva is pure stillness.

In Krishna, you see both stillness and dance.

Q: Why Hinduism is so complex?

AP: (Laughingly) Hinduism is only as complex as life. And if you need to have something to guide you through life, then you need to be at least on the same level as life, if not on the higher level. Do not ask, “Why Hinduism is complicated?” Ask, “Why have our minds been dumbed down to look at only over-simplified versions of reality?”