Shiva as the Cosmic Dancer is the embodiment and manifestation of eternal energy in its ‘five activities’ (panch-kriya)

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Shiva as the Cosmic Dancer is the embodiment and manifestation of eternal energy in its ‘five activities’ (panch-kriya)

Creation (sristi)–the pouring forth or unfolding
Maintenance (sthiti)– the duration
Destruction (samhara)–the taking back or reabsorption 
Concealment (tiro-bhava)–the veiling of True Being behind the masks and garbs of apparitions, aloofness, display of Maya,
Favor (anugraha)–acceptance of the devotee, acknowledgment of the pious endeavor of the yogi, bestowal of peace.

Shiva is Kala, ‘The Black One’ ‘Time’; but he is also Maha Kala, ‘Great Time’, ‘Eternity’. As Nataraja, King of Dancers, his gestures, wild and full of grace, precipitate the cosmic illusion; his flying arms and legs and the swaying of his torso produce– indeed, they are–the continuous creation-destruction of the universe, death exactly balancing birth, annihilation the end of every coming-forth. The choreography is the whirligig of time. History and its ruins, the explosion of suns, are flashes from the tireless swinging sequence of the gestures. In the medieval bronze figurines, not merely a single phase or movement, but cyclic rhythm, flowing on and non in the unstayable, irreversible round of the Mahayugas, or Great Eons, is marked by the beating and stamping of the Master’s heel. But the face remains, meanwhile, in sovereign calm.
Jai Nataraja ~ Jai Shiva Shankar!! 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻