my things

2018 vibes

Rumi

Nee Indha Mayam - Papanasam Sivam

My shot of one of the gopurams of the iconic Thillai Nataraja Temple in Chidambaram. I had the incredible opportunity of receiving an close and intimate darshan of Thillai Nataraja himself. Chidambaram, besides being a very powerful Shiva temple, holds a special place in a dancer’s heart. This archaic temple is the origin of the representation of Shiva as Nataraja, the Lord of Dance, whose cosmic dance symbolizes the constant flux of atomic energy within the universe. Here, Shiva is worshipped as the abstract in the original swayambhu lingam that the sages Patanjali and Vyaghrapada discovered in the forest, the form in the anthropomorphic Nataraja murti, and the formless in a partition within the sanctum sanctorum they open up during darshan, where Shiva is worshipped as that empty space, or akash, itself.