The Dance at the Heart of Everything
Shiva dances.
He dances at dawn. He dances at dusk. He dances in the cremation grounds where the world comes to its end. He dances in the great halls of heaven where the devas watch in wonder. He dances on the back of the demon Apasmara — ignorance personified — to ensure that ignorance is never destroyed but only held down, since the dance requires a surface and the cosmos requires the tension of ignorance against knowledge.
The Five Acts
The Shaiva tradition identifies five cosmic acts in the Tandava — five things that Shiva's dance performs simultaneously:
Srishti — creation, expressed in the hand that opens outward, scattering seeds.
Sthiti — preservation, expressed in the hand that makes the gesture of protection.
Samhara — dissolution, expressed in the hand that holds fire, the fire that will end the age.
Tirobhava — concealment, expressed in the foot that presses down, hiding the ultimate truth beneath the apparent world.
Anugraha — grace, expressed in the raised foot — always raised, always offered, the grace that is available to any who can release their attachment to the ground.
The Nataraja
The great bronze Nataraja — developed in Tamil Nadu under the Chola dynasty in the tenth and eleventh centuries — is one of humanity's greatest artistic achievements. It shows Shiva dancing within a ring of fire, one foot on the demon Apasmara, one foot raised, four arms in the gestures of the five acts.
It is not merely beautiful. It is a complete cosmology expressed in bronze.
The physicist Fritjof Capra described the Nataraja as the most accurate pre-scientific representation of the nature of matter — energy in constant motion, the dance that is indistinguishable from the dancer.