BEAUTY
In The Golden Seat, ‘Beauty’ is one of the three ‘legs’ of the seat: Beauty, Truth & Goodness (Plato’s natural theology). One cannot truly understand one without the
other. We integrate beauty in our worldview to complete the picture: Truth and
Beauty; Goodness and Beauty.
Beauty’s nature is Self and Self Expression. It is the self alone what defines pleasure--a
reflection of our personality and individuality. It is an individual’s opinion of beauty that proves
how different one is from the rest. How we define beauty illuminates our style and
uniqueness.
Beauty gives one pleasure which is found in various experiences:
• Physical: eating, exercise, sports, dancing, singing, sex.
• Social: accomplishment, recognition, service.
• Cultural: classical to modern art
The pleasure of beauty is experienced either externally via the five senses or internally with
the mind.
As an illustration, let’s consider the sport of marlin fishing (my Father’s pastime
hobby). Through the senses the eyes enjoy the blue--green tones of the sparkling ocean, the skin feels
the warmth of the sun, the body feels the motion of the water, the nose smells the salt of the water, the
hands feel the pull of the fish and its fight, the eyes take pleasure of the marlin dancing on the water.
The fisherman takes internal pleasure by his pride of his strength and skills; his resolve and commitment; the
seaworthiness of his boat, his knowledge of the Sea: wind, the current, temperature, birds on the horizon; of the
ecology of ‘catch & release’ – to keep game for food and to return game for sport. A lifetime of
experience, skill and dedication is put to test for that big catch—an accomplishment only the seasoned fisherman
knows it’s true beauty.
Another example is cultivating a garden (my Mother’s hobby). The eyes take pleasure in the
colors of the flowers and the beautiful garden layout; the gardener takes delight as she smells the various
fragrances; the pleasure of beauty is felt with the hands as they maintain landscape with watering and
soil care. Internally, the mind takes pleasure in the one’s design of the garden—a beauty truly
understood by its maker. Pride of design, scope and imagination.
Elizabeth Gilbert’s ‘Eat, Pray, Love’, a world-traveling memoir about one’s search for truth
from the two extremes of ‘worldly pleasure’ to ‘spiritual devotion’, offers, possibly, the best explanation
on the importance of beauty. In Story 36 Ms. Gilbert has Italian author Luigi Barzini answering the
query, “With having a past of producing the greatest artistic, political and scientific minds of the ages,
why hasn’t Italy become a major world power?” Mr. Barzini replies, “answers have much to do with a sad
Italian history of corruption by local leaders and exploitation by foreign dominators. Italians
concluded that the world cannot be trusted - it is corrupt, misspoken, unstable, exaggerated and
unfair. One should only trust one’s senses. Italians will tolerate incompetent generals,
presidents, tyrants, professors, bureaucrats, captains of industry, however they will never tolerate
incompetent artists, musicians, opera singers, conductors, ballerinas, courtesans, actors, film
directors, cooks, tailors”.
Ms. Gilbert astutely observes that, “Only beauty can be trusted. Pleasure cannot be
bargained down. And sometimes the meal is the only currency that is real. To devote yourself to
the creation and enjoyment of beauty, then, can be a serious business—not always necessarily a means of
escaping reality, but sometimes a means of holding on to the real when everything else is flaking away
into…rhetoric and plot. The world is unkind and unfair. The best you can do is pride yourself on
the fact that you always fillet your fish with perfection, or make the lightest ricotta in the whole
town.”
Life
has a way of making you feel sometimes like a criminal, a dunce; like you are crazy. Better not to remember the awful things - remember the beautiful
things. Everything washes away except for your Purpose & your
Mission.
The whole fantasy realm of beauty, love, romanticism is the key to spirituality. Maintain
beauty in your life, as you sense it, as you create it, for you keep out degradation—the spoiler of one’s
spirit.
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