Kedar said : …. Tandav dance of Shiva is a dance of destruction. Shiva has another name ARDHA NARI NATESHWARA- half man and half woman. he is female and male at the same time. He is both. He is complete. And since he is COMPLETE, it is very difficult to understand SHIVA. But you have understood him. You can see universe in terms on Tandav dance of Shiva that means you are able to see the CONTRADICTIONS! you can understand the CHAOS. And through this understanding the struggle to break the structure has started.
No Kedar, I have not. But am trying perhaps not to understand as much as to get into harmony with the Tandav dance of Shiva. To be both male and female at the same time ? I think the representations of the words go beyond the literal meanings as used in language. Male is the force of destruction and uncontrolled action (fire), and female is the force of nurturing (water). In the conflict of the forces arises creativity. The creativity of our Universe.
They are counterbalancing forces never totally in harmony. For if they were, our universe would be inert. like the Dead Sea. But it is not is it ? It is constantly at play. Why ? I am ot sure, except consciousness exists as a result of that play. Everything in a process of fluid change. Impermanence.
shekhar
hi dude…
Shiva when takes the form of the ardha nari nateshwara and starts dancing actually he is telling that the omnipresence is the truth. Male and female dissolve in me. There is no more conflict.
In other way round… lets approach it from the other way. There is omnipresence…………………………………………………………………………………. dead zone…………………………… there arises a NEED!
( try and observe carefully…if the bladder is full we have to piss…is it a desire or need? It’s a need. Can we desire to piss? Hahaha…funny thought…but the path of words is funny…sorry for the crude example…so need is natural and beautiful, desire is ugly…what gives rise to desire? Mind gives rise to desire… why? Mind has its own existence. It’s the conflict between male and female and through this conflict they get attracted towards each other and once they meet, they get the glimpse of omnipresent…but they cant remain in that state for long because they use some medium…. and through no medium one can remain in that state forever…. so this was about NEED and Desire!)
Now out come of NEED is Negative and positive. They get created out of nothingness, out of omnipresence because of the need.
(Now omnipresence means presence of some one and how come its nothingness? Nothingness is just a better word! )
Now there are negative and positive… now they are not complete….so the sorrow, pain, grief. And as Satre said other is hell, why? Because other has something which we don’t have…hell is created…desire takes birth…. conflict starts…negative and positive get attracted towards each other…
So Shiva is actually showing us the omnipresence. But what you are seeing is the male as a force and female as another force, which are the basic forces behind the creation of the universe. And you have understood this very clearly and that’s why I said you can see the contradictions of this materialistic world very clearly. But which is the link that is missing?
It’s not just about creativity. Omnipresence is Creativity. Even in our metaphysical world we can see that all the saints who wrote something is all poetry. The worst they could do to convey the message was poetry.
Poets, the best thing they can do is poetry. But still while doing it they are in tune with the omnipresent. That’s why one can’t compose true poetry. It comes naturally. Or observe the (Indian) classical singers or (western) rock starts…they seem to be lost when they are performing. What happens? They become one with the ONE.
When are you creative? You were creative when you were in the TEMPLE. You were creative when you saw the brain tissues of your father burning in front of your eyes. You were creative when you saw that woman from Solapur begging for few rupees. And in many other such moments! And when you wrote those incidences you were a craftsman who knew his craft of story telling so well that many readers were in tears after reading that. What makes you so skilled in your art of expression? You can see or sense ‘the dance of contradiction’ of this world, that’s what makes you so skilled.
So now what is the point?
Review-
1.Shiva’s Ardha Nari Nateshwara Avatara is nothing but a manifestation of Omnipresence.
2.Through omnipresence, as an out come of NEED, negative and positive are created.
3. Out of incompleteness the Desire rises and the conflict starts between negative and positive. And the universe is the result.
3.your thought was, male is a force and female is another force and because of these two basic forces universe is created. This is where you are sensing the ‘ dance of contradictions’. Which is exactly the case, as it appears to be.
4. Next you say, out of this conflict happens creativity. The Creativity of our universe! Why this is wrong?
Because Universe is created out of Omnipresent and then through the conflict of negative and positive. But all we can see is the conflict between negative and positive. And that’s why the beautiful word MITHYA is used. Its not what it appears to be i.e. MITHYA.
take care…lots of love…kedar…
You say : But it is not is it ? It is constantly at play. Why ? I am ot sure, except consciousness exists as a result of that play.
Everything in a process of fluid change. Impermanence.
If its stagnant, it will rot, just like if we stop exercising our brain it gets rusted. So one needs to move on & in order to do that one has to keep going. I look at it this way: the cycle of Srushti should be complete, that comprises of three basic elements: Generation means Birth; Operation means life or progress, advancement; & Destruction means death-the very fact, the end of life.
Therefore, life Has to move on in order to complete One step of this cycle G-O-D.
Kedar says: so need is natural and beautiful, desire is ugly…
Desire is ugly till we heed it to fulfill by selfish means & for selfish interests. When a desire is born & you fulfill it to make
the other person happier, it cannot be ugly!?! And trust, at times so-called NEED takes an ugly face if fulfilled by wrong ways.
Take care,
K.A.
I want a shava tandav withen 2min.
Hi Shekhar, in connection with the above thread you may find the follow paragraphs from my book Self-Designed Universe interesting.
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Chapter 8
PRAY, NATARAJA, WHAT MAKES YOU DANCE?
‘Pray, Nataraja, what makes you dance?’
I wonder if Nataraja (lord of dancers, another name for Shiva) – perhaps even with a tear or two in his eyes – would not retort: ‘Parbati, who else?’ He may even add: ‘Arre bhai, O brother, who dances? What you think is dance is actually my struggle to wriggle out of Parbati’s clutches against her insistence on keeping me in chains, and viewed together, it gives you, you shadowy spectators, the appearance of a dance! Why, if all this is so dancy, all the wisest of your wise dream of freedom, liberation, nirvana, dream of getting out of this dance?’ (For the benefit of the Western reader I may explain that Shiva, in the Hindu religious traditions, is taken to be pure-consciousness, and Parbati, his consort, represents the actual world, which lends itself, thanks to our scientists, to be reduced to four basic forces. So that, simply put, Parbati represents four basic forces.)
I assure my readers who might have begun yawning in anticipation of a boring chapter ahead, involving perhaps a whole lot of ‘dry,’ whimsical electrons, photons, mesons, pions, muons, and so on and so forth that our treatment of four basic forces would be quite ‘wet.’ What is there at the micro or even micro-micro levels is very much here at the macro, and even at our own very human levels. And as humans, you know we can be as ‘wet’ in our descriptions as we wish, or as our ‘spirits’ allow. Follow it? So rest assured that we shall take up the challenge of describing physicists’ four basic forces in our own very lively and human terms. As to their accuracy please withhold judgment till our proposition has unfolded fully.
So let us begin from where we digressed. That Parbati in the guise of four basic forces of Nature has held Shiva in bondage. And that the whole game of life, in fact, represents the efforts on the part of Shiva to get out of that bondage.
In other words, the whole game of life is the game of bondage and freedom being played between Parbati and Shiva, between the matter principle and the spirit principle, between the body principle and the soul principle, between the restricting principle and the freeing principle, between the passive principle and the active principle, between even the reactive principle and the active principle, between the actual world and the spiritual world, between four fundamental forces and pur-consciousness, at myriad of levels. And of course through the agency or mediation of what we call our minds, or may even call the mind principle, at our own levels.
******
We as pure consciousness are Shiva, while our body as well as whole world is Parbati, but since we are also One, in this sense Shiva and Parbati are also One.
Harb
Shiva hear…
Shiva see…
Shiva’s dance…
Set you free…
Shiva you…
Shiva me…
All that Shiva says,
is to BE !
🙂
sir,
i also want to learn this dance would you guide me who can help me out?
jayendra : learn to follow your heart, learn not to be afraid of chaos, learn that the moment that is now is all that exists – nothing beyond and nothng before. shekhar
Dear Shekhar,
the real reason behind tandav is loss of the better half..i e SATI.
WITHOUT HER SHIVA FEELS INCOMPLETE ..PLEASE READ THE REAL STUFF..
there is so much in tandav ..lost love,grief,reliving all the emotions ,near death like scenario for all three worlds,and how tandav is stopped by a child under his feet..
totally different then what i read here which is painful…we seem to have totally missed the point of LOVE AND UNDERSTANDING..HINDU MYTHOLOGY IS ANECDOTAL ACCOUNT OF HUMAN WAY OF LIFE AND CONSCIOUSNESS.
PLEASE HELP IT BY SUSTAINING AND PROPAGATING THE CORRECT ACCOUNT
dear undercurrent, could u please sendme the right account and I will post it for the this community. I too am looking for a far deeper understanding of the Tandav dance, and woudl really appreciate it, shekhar
Dear Shekhar,
it is really a nice topic you have chosen. Please keep updated as i sing shiv tandav but knowing much dipper,but really intereasted in more to known about such a powerful stotram !!!!
Thanks a lot!!!
i am just a devotee of shiva,and i love him in all his form.some time i imagine myself dancing with shiva.the thought of natraja only evokes energy with in.
AS i know about tandav dance it is the story of lord shiva and sati.when sati burned herself in his fathers yagya, shiva could not tolarate and he started tandav nritya to wash off his anger,and whole world distructed with his energy.
My son learned in school that tandav is to kill evil,There are seven types of tandav,Lord Shiva dances during the creation, protection and destruction of the worlds, though the kind of His dance varies with respect to the action. (san^dhyA tAnDava, Urdhva tANDava, rudra tANDava, samhAra tANDava etc.). The dance of the Lord takes place in every minute particle, for all of us to exist and act. That is the source of all the energy. His movement is shakti. Yogis hear and see the dance of the Lord by invoking the kuNDalinI shakti.
check out the wordpress blog of rajen jani. he has a nice sketch of shiva parvati, where your questions will find their answers. i found mine.
just watched anurag kashyap’s gulal… every character made sense … except the ardhanarishwara… which i finally came back adn google… i understand how the character came about but finally after readin shekhar’s blog, it sort of makes sense how the character gets killed in the end and so does the creativity of piyush misra…
hello,
pls help me with the ardhanariswar stotram and pooja procedure to be performed at home as well its significence
Namaste 🙂
Lila … The Cosmic Dance … Now & Forever 🙂
In Lak’ech …
Sir if you have any deatils about seven Tandava’s Stories of Shiva than pleas send me all stories.
Thank you
Kirtika Bhatt
Sir,
I read Shiv tandava every day after worshiping shiva. I heard from some1 saying that it is not good to read shiv Tandav.
If you can advise if I should read it or not. If you can also tel me is there any specific vidhi for reading the Tandava stotram.
Thank you
Balkrishna Dubey
I want to learn Tandava, where do I????