Beauty
Can the appreciation of beauty be used as a spiritual tool?
What is beauty?
The old debate is about whether beauty is a property of the object or "in the eye of the beholder". Clearly both are necessary. Therefore beauty is an emergent property of a system involving an observer and an object. Each observer will have different criteria and some objects will meet those criteria better than others. Another great source is the Dictionary of the History of Ideas.
If we know what is beautiful to us (not necessarily in general terms, but a few examples), and we pay attention to those items, are we improving our lives? Spirituality?
Do you know of something you consider beautiful that you can go and look at (or, music that you can listen to?) Are there art galleries in your area that you can visit for inspiration?
Here's a link to another site discussing beauty as a spiritual tool:
http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/practices/practices.php?id=2
Louie Swartzberg TED talk.
What is beauty?
The old debate is about whether beauty is a property of the object or "in the eye of the beholder". Clearly both are necessary. Therefore beauty is an emergent property of a system involving an observer and an object. Each observer will have different criteria and some objects will meet those criteria better than others. Another great source is the Dictionary of the History of Ideas.
If we know what is beautiful to us (not necessarily in general terms, but a few examples), and we pay attention to those items, are we improving our lives? Spirituality?
Do you know of something you consider beautiful that you can go and look at (or, music that you can listen to?) Are there art galleries in your area that you can visit for inspiration?
Here's a link to another site discussing beauty as a spiritual tool:
http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/practices/practices.php?id=2
Louie Swartzberg TED talk.
An English Major's View
WHAT IS BEAUTY?
The knee-jerk response from an arts-English major responds: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty... that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”, crediting Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn properly. So the conversation begins-- the role of “the eye of the beholder”-- perception (or reception?) as part of the process-- a sunrise must be seen, a symphony heard, to be appreciated as lovely.
This very necessity for a self to be amazed at, or in awe of, beauty takes me out of myself, and into a oneness with that which is outside of me. The music, the sunrise, enters me, and I am momentarily relieved of my singularity, of that loneliness that is the human condition.
Aha, paradox! Often a useful road sign on the way to spiritual revelation. Beauty is not just color, form, composition, pattern, symmetry, functionality... but all of these and then some.
Beauty is an attribute of God, or Spirit, or a Higher Power. Appreciating beauty is a choice. It is the action that gives me a few moments of gratitude and grace, opening myself to that transitory, transcendent flow that is my close and conscious contact with the God of my understanding.
Why momentary, why transitory? Why can't I have that connection, that consciousness all the time? Why can't I be blissed out on beauty, and in spiritual contact with God all the time?
Because I'm human. My humanness renders me instinctual, an animal designed primarily for survival, and I need this kind of instinctive consciousness to navigate the world I live in.
But it's my capacity for conscious thought, for logic and rationality, that makes me self-aware and singular, so I seek community, communication, and communion; gifts I find in others and God. And then we can converse about these questions... what is beauty... what is God?
A C-W
The knee-jerk response from an arts-English major responds: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty... that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”, crediting Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn properly. So the conversation begins-- the role of “the eye of the beholder”-- perception (or reception?) as part of the process-- a sunrise must be seen, a symphony heard, to be appreciated as lovely.
This very necessity for a self to be amazed at, or in awe of, beauty takes me out of myself, and into a oneness with that which is outside of me. The music, the sunrise, enters me, and I am momentarily relieved of my singularity, of that loneliness that is the human condition.
Aha, paradox! Often a useful road sign on the way to spiritual revelation. Beauty is not just color, form, composition, pattern, symmetry, functionality... but all of these and then some.
Beauty is an attribute of God, or Spirit, or a Higher Power. Appreciating beauty is a choice. It is the action that gives me a few moments of gratitude and grace, opening myself to that transitory, transcendent flow that is my close and conscious contact with the God of my understanding.
Why momentary, why transitory? Why can't I have that connection, that consciousness all the time? Why can't I be blissed out on beauty, and in spiritual contact with God all the time?
Because I'm human. My humanness renders me instinctual, an animal designed primarily for survival, and I need this kind of instinctive consciousness to navigate the world I live in.
But it's my capacity for conscious thought, for logic and rationality, that makes me self-aware and singular, so I seek community, communication, and communion; gifts I find in others and God. And then we can converse about these questions... what is beauty... what is God?
A C-W
A Darwinian View
A TED talk proposing that the human response we recognize as the experience of beauty comes from our common evolutionary heritage. In "A Darwinian theory of beauty", Denis Dutton explores the idea that evolution has given us an appreciation of certain things that were advantageous as the human species evolved. A great place to live - including open fields, a source of water and a few trees to climb - has been the subject of landscape painters since the beginning. We consider expert performance - whether athletic or operatic - to be "beautiful" because we have evolved to seek characteristics of superior mates. Likewise cleverness, in poetry or mathematics, is naturally much admired.
A Systems Engineering View
Beauty may be our response to evidence that there IS organization in the universe above and beyond what we do as individuals or as a species. A seashell, a mature tree, or the layers of an atom - all speak to us. They ask for our attention. Functionality at a level above and beyond the human should - and does - give us pause.
Beauty is not a spiritual tool as such. It is a human response to a combination of properties in the world. But we can take the time to appreciate beauty, and that would be a spiritual practice, or tool.
Beauty is not a spiritual tool as such. It is a human response to a combination of properties in the world. But we can take the time to appreciate beauty, and that would be a spiritual practice, or tool.
