The cosmic dance of Siva Nataraja is both symbol and reality. It is the movement of creation, preservation and dissolution. This triad, taken together, is the principle of Maya – God's endless impulse – taking place within each of us, and within every atom of the universe.

Siva is the Divine Dancer, visualized in terms of motion and vibration, who in 108 varied movements interprets the mathematical Law of the Universe. Nataraja personifies the kinetic aspect of Siva’s divinity – the elemental force through the power of which the whole universe is created, sustained, and ultimately destroyed. We are all dancing with Siva this very moment, and He with us.

This cosmic dance of Siva is called Anandatandava, the Dance of Bliss. It symbolizes both the cosmic cycles of creation and destruction, and the daily rhythm of birth and death. Anandatandava is a pictorial allegory of the five principle manifestations of eternal energy — creation, destruction, preservation, salvation, and illusion.

Siva depicted as Ardhanarishvara (half man and half woman) represents the union and differentiation of Yin and Yang (the eternal feminine and masculine principles), complementing, supplementing, initiating, completing and fulfilling the divine play of the Transcendent Reality with the manifest reality, in the phenomenal world of myriad changes of names and forms, in lila (diverse, divine play), and in the unique rhythms and melodies of Siva’s energies in the cosmos.

Siva as Nataraja, the Lord of the Dance, is therefore a quintessential symbol for the meaning of life itself – and the dance, its rhythms, and melodies, for the universe itself. In Siva’s dance, the body becomes the spirit.  This dance is not just a symbol. It takes place within each of us at the atomic level at every moment. The birth of the world, its maintenance, its destruction, the covering of the soul and its revelation... these are the five acts of this dance. All that has been made will be unmade, and all that has been destroyed will be resurrected.