The Dance That Holds World: A Tale of Patañjali, Vyāghrapāda, and the Living Forest

from the teachings of Douglas Brooks

Long ago, when the world was thick with longing and the veil between the seen and unseen was thin, two seekers set out on the path to truth. They came from different places, each carrying a different prayer—but both were drawn to the same sacred forest, the same trembling silence, the same living mystery that shimmered behind all things.

The first was Patañjali—a serpent-bodied sage, born of wisdom, who fell to earth as an answer to his mother’s prayer. He had studied deeply, wandered widely, and witnessed the luminous brilliance—and the deep confusion—of the human mind. In his heart burned a single question: How can suffering end?

Guided by this yearning, Patañjali wandered into the jungle until he reached Chidam-ba-rum, the forest shrine of Shiva—the god of paradox: dancer and destroyer, stillness and flame. There he found a linga, a simple stone column smeared with sandalwood paste and red kumkum, a sign that others had come before him. The linga was adorned with an exquisite flower unlike anything he had ever seen—vibrant, fragrant, impossible to reach.

Day after day, Patañjali searched the forest to find this sacred flower. But each evening, he returned empty-handed. Each morning, a new blossom had been laid at the shrine.

He began to understand: someone else was here. Someone had been offering what he could not. So one night, humbled, he offered instead a seed—small, raw, pulled from the soil itself. It was what he had. And it was honest.

That night, a rustling stirred the trees, and from the canopy descended a strange figure—human, but with the clawed feet of a tiger. This was Vyāghrapāda, the Tiger-Footed One. The flowers had been his.

Long ago, Vyāghrapāda had whispered his own longing at the shrine:

“Beloved Shiva, I do not need wisdom or scripture. I do not seek clarity or fame. I only want to see Your dance—not carved in stone, not painted in tales, but real. Let me glimpse the ecstasy that moves the stars and splits the atom. Let me behold the rhythm that holds this world together.”

And Shiva had answered:

“Then I shall give you the gift of vision. But to see My dance, you must move like the forest itself—agile like a tiger, steady like the earth.”

In that instant, Vyāghrapāda had been transformed—his feet became paws, his senses sharpened, and his spirit attuned to the wild pulse of the sacred. He lived in the forest canopy, gathering rare blossoms no one else could reach. And silently, he had watched Patañjali, recognizing the depth of his devotion.

Now, together, the two seekers sat before the linga. They shared mantras. They shared silence. They merged their prayers—structure and surrender, clarity and devotion.

And as they chanted, the air thickened. The linga began to tremble and spiral. From this pillar of stillness emerged Nataraja, the Lord of the Dance—Shiva in his ecstatic, world-creating form. Every gesture of his arms became a revelation. Every footfall crushed illusion and called forth truth. Around him burned the ring of fire: the cosmos alive, pulsing, infinite.

They saw the entire cycle of creation and dissolution—ananda tandava, the dance of bliss.

In that moment of revelation, Shiva turned toward Patañjali and said:

“You who asked for structure—receive it. You will become the thread-holder, the one who gathers the vastness into sutra. I give you the teachings of yoga, of grammar, of Ayurveda. You will offer the world a mirror of steadiness.”

And to Vyāghrapāda:

“You who asked to see—look closely. There is not one dance, but many. Beyond bliss, there is fury. There is stillness. There is the dance of concealment, the dance of emergence. Because you asked not for knowledge, but for experience, you shall see it all.”

Patañjali bowed, his mission complete. He would shape the Yoga Sūtras, each word a jewel, each verse a path. He would walk back into the world carrying fire in his bones and clarity in his voice.

Vyāghrapāda remained in the forest, watching, listening, witnessing every movement of the Divine—not to master it, but to belong to it.

And in time, Nataraja’s dance folded back into stillness, returning once more to the formless form of the linga. But something had changed.

The world had a path now. And the forest still trembled with presence.