Rodevra Republic

The Dance of Shiva Today's art session is something very dear to my heart. I am giving an extract of an essay, ‘The Dance of Shiva’ by Ananda Coomaraswamy. This essay is part of a book that has a collection of 14 essays which critically deal with Indian art and aesthetics, ethos, philosophy, music, etc. He was a brilliant scholar and the greatest among Indian art historians. Notice Coomaraswamy's language. He expresses such a complex idea so effortlessly and elegantly and with such beauty. Indeed, believe it or not, during my twenties those passages struck me so profoundly that I had typed them on a typewriter and preserved them. Re-visiting the passages after so many years, the words sprung up and came alive as if I knew them by heart. In today's world and age, very few will understand the beauty of language and flight of thought which together raise our sensibilities almost into  the spiritual firmament. I give below a partial extract from his essay. See how beautifully ...

Very few people are actually qualified or have the capacity to transform another, leave alone a toxic person. We actually have no business to try to change others. On closer inspection, we may have many faults ourselves that we will to well to deal with first.  So then how do you manage a toxic person, and there are so many we come across all the time?  Once we are firmly rooted in ourselves, we will not be swayed by the evil doings of anyone. Secondly rather than being absorbed in the toxic nature of another person, we could raise ourselves on higher ground and show kindness, compassion as in most cases the toxic behavior of others is guided by forces beyond their control and they are actually quite helpless.