Between the ages of the world there is an interval of profound quiet, and the tradition gives it one of its most beloved images. When a universe has run its course and dissolved, the waters return — a single, shoreless cosmic ocean, the Kshira Sagara. And upon it, in the long night between creations, Vishnu reclines in sleep.

His resting-place is itself a marvel. He lies upon Ananta-Shesha, the cosmic serpent whose name means "the endless one, the remainder" — Shesha, because he is what is left when all else has been withdrawn; Ananta, because he is without end. The serpent floats coiled upon the deep, his thousand hoods arched into a canopy above the sleeping god. In this aspect Vishnu is worshipped as Anantashayana or Padmanabha, and the image is among the great icons of Hindu art.

His sleep is not unconsciousness. It is Yoga Nidra — "yogic sleep," a state of complete repose that is at the same time complete awareness. Vishnu withdraws his activity but never his presence; he is at rest and fully awake within the rest, the still point holding the unmanifest cosmos within himself. Tradition often places his consort Lakshmi at his feet, the sustaining grace that attends even his stillness.

Then creation stirs again, and it does so with exquisite gentleness. From Vishnu's navel a lotus rises on a long stalk, unfolds, and reveals seated within it Brahma, the creator, who will bring forth the new world. The cosmos is not hammered into being; it blooms, opening like a flower from the body of the sleeping god. From this image Vishnu takes the name Padmanabha, "the lotus-naveled."

The picture carries a quiet philosophy. The serpent's coils represent the residue of time and karma carried over from the world that was, the seedbed from which the next world grows — nothing is annihilated, only gathered and held. The waters are unformed potential. The sleep is the unmanifest absolute, neither dead nor active but poised. And the lotus is the tender beginning of manifestation, beauty rising untouched from the deep.

There is variation in the tellings — whether this sleep falls at the close of a single "day of Brahma" or only at the far greater dissolution that ends Brahma's entire life; whether Shesha and the serpent on which Vishnu floats are one being or distinguished. But the heart of the image is constant across the tradition: that beneath all the turning of worlds there is a vast, watchful repose, and that every new creation is a dream that rises, lotus-like, from a stillness that was never truly empty.