[Buddha-l] beauty--or art-- (?) and the restraint of the senses

[Jayarava]

Hi Joanna

Glad you haven't bailed completely, but "art" is kind of a big subject no?

I wonder if it might be worth thinking about what might be the equivalent of "beauty" in Pāli. I thought that 'subha' might be a good place to start, but was eventually drawn to 'kalyāna'. 

I was particular struck by the pericope: So dhammaṃ deseti ādikalyāṇaṃ majjhekalyāṇaṃ pariyosānakalyāṇaṃ sātthaṃ sabyañjanaṃ, kevalaparipuṇṇaṃ parisuddhaṃ brahmacariyaṃ pakāseti. [e.g. PTS D i.63]

Walshe's translation: He teaches the Dharma, which is lovely in its beginning, lovely in its middle, lovely in its ending, in the spirit and the letter, and displays the fully-perfected and purified holy life. [p.99]

ādikalyāṇaṃ for instance occurs 76 times in the Pali Canon Online Database.(http://www.bodhgayanews.net/pali.htm)

There _are_ beautiful things to pay attention to in Pāli. These are connected with awakening. We could add kusala and bhaddaka. One could also find a number of metaphors... think of the similes for the jhanas in the DN 2.

So there is a vocabulary of beauty which is not associated with sensuality. It's just not associated with art in the minds of the authors of the Canon. There may be some mileage in looking at when highly decorated stupas started appearing - I think I am right in saying that these are the first evidence of a distinctly Buddhist 'art'. One could speculate that the images there were seen as coming under the heading of kalyāṇa, else putting them on stupas would have been a desecration.

Hope this is more OT and not so OTT.

Best wishes
Jayarava