[Buddha-l] FW: beauty--or art-- (?) and the restraint of thesenses

[Jayarava]

--- On Tue, 12/5/09, jkirk <jkirk at spro.net> wrote:

> Thanks for these. Looking at rajaniiya immediately made me
> think of the term glamorous. 

Which originally referred to magic and enchantment, and is thought by some to be an alternative spelling of *grammar* a term for any kind of scholarship or occult learning. Which would be similar in meaning in this case to vidya/vijja. Linked also presumably to charming, enchanting and bewitching. But I digress ;-)
 
> Wondering though if there are not sublime beauty
> experiences that don't necessarily arouse clinging <...>

> This mental "state" would be close to the concept of
> appreciation--valuing a sight without desiring to own it,

Well the Buddha does recommend dwelling in a state that he calls brahmavihara... it doesn't get very detailed descriptions in Pāli, but it doesn't seem to be analytical or discursive but more like an infinite sense of identification with living things: the mind becomes infinite, and one treats all beings as a mother protects her only child. 

In the Large Perfection of Wisdom Sutra the Arapacana meditation pointsd to the sameness of all of dharmas - the method is known as utākṣaranayasamatā which I tentatively render something like "the system of syllable identity". It's all about seeing the sameness of various aspects of the śunyata of dharmas which are indicated by keywords the first syllables of which are in the order of the Gāndhārī alphabet. But this is not in response to the senses.

If you leap ahead past the earlier phases of tantra then you have the figure of Ratnasambhava whose Wisdom is the that of "sameness" seeing the essential unity of all things. He's associated with beauty. Ratnasambhava and his function however, in my view, are linked to virtues (dana mudra) and values (he holds the cintamani) - which turns back to your comments about the beauty of conduct.

> Someone must have spoken about the idea of merging with the sublime, 
> losing one's sense of separation, as a noble philosophical
> practice? (As I understand it, this was the goal of the true
> _rasika_ in Indian esthetics.) 

The vedantic ideal was companionship with Brahma (brahmasahavyatā) which is critiqued in the Tevijja Sutta. (Note vijja again). Depending how you read Brahma (ie as a creator god or abstract principle) you might find some parallels in Christian thought I suspect.

> Erik's idea of the experience of beauty as close to enlightenment goes 
> to this idea. Wasn't the poet Wordsworth (and other poets of
> that ilk) into something of this sort in the presence of
> nature?

Wasn't it more to do with opium or ether than nature per se? ;-) 

Isn't rasika more like good taste, literally appreciation of tastes or colours, and hence 'delight'? I'm not familiar with it's technical use, but the dict doesn't imply anything sublime. 

Don't have much to say about Western thought or aesthetics. I think it has been many centuries since Western Art had much interest in the sublime - with Pärt et al as possible exceptions. Indeed art has more recently tended to consciously celebrate the banal. Where there is no conception of "sublime" how can there be an appreciation of it, let alone a submersion into it? That said there is a Richard Long retrospective on at the Tait Britain which I hope to catch! 

The last thing that occurs to me is that even the joy, bliss and rapture of meditation have to settle and be calmed before the conditions for knowledge and vision arise - according to some presentations anyway. After that neurotic desire for pleasant vedanā is not a problem.

Best Wishes
Jayarava