True Beauty
Photograph: Thierry Ollivier, "Buddha Maravijaya (style B d'U Thong)," musée Guimet, Paris, 14-15 Century. Photograph by Thierry Ollivier.
"Beauty does not come from the outside appearance of things. In the treasure of Buddha, "beauty" means that when your mind is not moving, everything is beautiful. I was teaching in Paris several years ago, and saw an exhibition of paintings. An important picture was hanging alone on a large wall. From across the room, you could not tell what this painting was about. As I walked up to it, this picture became clear -- two old and worn-out socks, with holes in them, hanging in a frame! All dirty! But that was considered to be the best picture. Everybody in the museum was saying, "Wow, that's number one, you know?!" But why have these dirty, worn out socks hanging in a high-class museum? What do these socks mean? What is their inside-meaning? The inside-meaning is a very important point.
The inside-meaning of this picture is that some human being did a lot of walking in these socks, putting a great deal of energy into them. With time passing, the socks became worn and full of holes--they showed a lot of suffering. So this picture of old socks is making a very important point: this picture teaches us something about a human being's life. So although the socks are very dirty, the meaning is very beautiful. Where does this beauty come from?
True beauty comes from our not-moving mind. In Sanskrit, it's called samadhi, which means deep meditation, unmoving. When your mind is not moving, everything is beautiful, just as it is. If your mind is moving, however, then even if a beautiful picture, a beautiful landscape, or beautiful things appear in front of you, this view quickly changes in your mind, and does not seem so beautiful. For example, when you are angry, or sad, or depressed, then even the birds chirping right outside your window sound irritating or depressing. Because you attach to feelings or outside conditions, whenever these feelings or outside conditions change, then your mind is constantly changing, changing, changing. You lose your center. Then even a beautiful landscape may seem ugly or revolting. So the most important thing is to keep a not-moving mind, moment to moment. Then you can perceive true beauty, and you can digest your understanding so that it can become wisdom."
--Excerpted from Zen Master Seung Sahn, The Three Treasure Structure of Buddhism.
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ARCS
Painting: Caspar David Friedrich Evening Landscape with Two Men. Oil on canvas, 1830-1835
How can the divine Oneness be seen?
In beautiful forms, breathtaking wonders,
awe-inspiring miracles?
The Tao is not obliged to present itself
in this way.
If you are willing to be lived by it, you will
see it everywhere, even in the most
ordinary things.
—Lao Tsu
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Painting: Caspar David Friedrich, The Abbey in the Oakwood (1809-10)
"At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman, and these hills, the softness of the sky, the outline of these trees at this very minute lose the illusory meaning with which we had clothed them, henceforth more remote than a lost paradise. That denseness and that strangeness of the world is absurd."
—Albert Camus
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Photograph of a Sadhu Woman from Killing The Buddha's excerpt from William Dalrymple’s book, Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India.
“Her wise brow and deep eyes presiding, so beautiful still, but now so worn, so profoundly experienced that you could hardly call them sad.”
—Virginia Woolf referring to her mother’s eyes in Reminiscences
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Photograph: Herbert Ponting, "Sunrise from the Summit of Fuji." More here.from the collection here.
And a poet said, Speak to us of Beauty.
And he answered:
Where shall you seek beauty, and how
shall you find her unless she herself be your
way and your guide?
And how shall you speak of her except
she be the weaver of your speech?
The aggrieved and injured say,
"Beauty is kind and gentle."
The tired and weary say,
"Beauty is of soft whisperings
She speaks in our spirit."
In winter say the snow-bound,
"She shall come with the spring leaping upon the hills."
All these things have you said of beauty,
Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied,
And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.
It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,
But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.
It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,
But rather an image you see through you
close your eyes and a song you hear though
you shut your ears.
People of Orphalese,
beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.
But you are life and you are the veil.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
But you are eternity and you are the mirror.
~ Kahlil Gibran from The Prophet. Courtesy of the curator: The Beauty We Love.
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