One day I saw a picture of pregnant dancer from a Korean magazine, wrapped in a white ciliate piece of cloth dancing in trance in bare foot while oblivious of her round and protruding belly. I remember myself thinking, either she must be crazy or just totally in bliss that didn’t care anything in the world except her dancing… But somehow she looked strangely mystic and fascinating to my young mind of barely twenty at the time.
She was an unorthodox, kind of a maverick in the highly conservative and traditional Korean dance world in those days. Yet she was successful exactly because of her daring and free spirited ways of dancing that was distinctively different than many others. She was also old (in her early forty at the time) for a dancer when most of other dancers were long ago to have retired. She took up dancing only in her late twenty and never stopped since then even when pregnant. As I read the interview article further, I also learned that she was the first Korean disciple of Osho Rajneesh, the controversial and flamboyant Indian Guru who rendered strong influence in the hippy generation. She dedicated her success to the practice of Yoga and the guru’s teachings. Another picture of her with Rajneesh at the corner somehow left ringing in my heart with certain longing and wanderlust.
It was then and there, my interest in Yoga and Indian mysticism began. I raved through any possible written materials in Korean about Yoga, Rajneesh and other Indian mystics. There weren’t many. I searched high and low with little success. One thing led me to another…even deciding to learn English so that I could go to India one day to meet Rajneesh. But then, it never happened because he passed away before I could even have a chance…Anyway life has always a way to eventually bring us to where we most want to be, but in completely different ways than we might expect or dream of initially. I have not managed to become a professional dancer like her or become the disciple of Rajneesh. But in the end, I did become a dancer of life and disciple of the original cosmic dancer, Shiva…
Shiva has many different personae that illuminate his essence. The most well known is his role as the King Dancer, or in Sanskrit, Nataraja. Natarajasna (Dancer Pose) is a standing balance posture that involves bending one knee and grasping the ankle or foot from behind. As we then lean forward and kick back with foot, an arm stretches forward to complete the pose. This pose is the physical embodiment of one of the many guises of Shiva.
In this guise he is commonly portrayed with snakes around his neck, dreadlocks standing on end, balancing atop a tiny dwarf, and encircled by a ring or fire.
Snakes are metaphors and frightening creatures for most of us that dangles from Shiva’s neck as he dances. The poison the cobra carries symbolizes the toxic nature of ignorance, the misunderstanding of ourselves as something other than divine that is represented by the tiny dwarf-like demon upon which he stands. The remedy to that affliction, which is enlightened knowledge and he carries its symbolic flame in one of his palms.
Shiva’s world-destroying dance is potent symbol that can be understood both cosmologically and psychologically. He performs the dance of destruction that destroys the universe. This is also the dance of knowledge that takes us from the unreal to the real, from the ignorance to the knowledge, from the ego to the Self. From a yogic perspective, the dance disentangles all the mental webs by which we have imprisoned ourselves in patterns and habits throughout our lives that don’t serve us, but rather inhibit us. Shiva, as Nataraja, is the destroyer of our delusions and illusions.
Yoga seeks to rid us of the ignorance through various practices, such as asana, pranayam, and meditation, and by constantly reminding us of the fact that we are all divine in nature. Still we constantly forget, fall prey to the poison of ignorance, the dwarf. This seemingly helpless creature is usually busy causing mischief, which mainly consists of keeping us all caught up in our own daily dramas. Shiva does not let this little character get the best of him and instead uses him as a pedestal for his dance. By standing over the demon of ignorance, he is able to have a higher gaze, or higher level of consciousness, which allows him to rise above daily drama by just paying attention to the rhythm of his dance.
Where there is beginning, there is end; where there is creation, life, there is dissolution, death. Life and death exists hand-in-hand. But most of time we fear death while celebrate life. Because for ignorant, unenlightened mortals like us, death implies the end of everything we are familiar with in this limited physical reality. However, Shiva understands that destruction clears the path for rebirth and that in rebirth and growth there is compassion. Brahma the creator cannot do his work properly if Shiva the destroyer has not done his. It is Shiva’s destruction that provides the fertile platform for Brahma’s process of rebuilding.
Thus destruction is not something to be fear of but to be welcomed for changes to come about for individual growth as well as cosmic evolutionary process. Shiva is not filled with guilt over the destruction he causes. His focus, his detachment in carrying out the painful duties of what others fear the most, he does it by simply transmuting his true compassion into the cosmic dance he is engrossed in. He destroys everything that stagnates, holds or blocks in our obstinate limited vision. But that is true compassion for he only ignites the fire of true courage in us, so that we could face the adversity only to become equal to the divinity within us. Time and again, whenever I find myself falling into forgetfulness, torpor, and lose focus in the midst of busy, ever churning petty mind, to stray away from what is important, it is the Natarjasana I keep come back to, to find back the balance and necessary perspective to be up and bounty once again. Like the image of a dancer that captured my attention long ago, Shiva is the divine manifestation I find most resonation deep in my heart…
