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

[jkirk]

Thanks, Erik, for citing those western philosophers whose names I
simply couldn't conjure, but I just knew they existed, and
recalled that they were into the sublime of beauty, properly
cultivated of course (nothing vulgar and quotidian going on
there).   I did know Kant was one of them, but not having "really
read" Kant through, only second-hand, I hesitated to cite him. 

Since Jayarava's reply, I consulted my colleague in S. Asian art
history (way ahead of me on the details) and she says rasika
carries both the limited meaning of someone with good taste or
discrimination, and the expanded meaning of someone able to
experience sublimity by entering the raga or the rasa dominating
the particular dance-drama.

"Hatred for pleasant feelings is as much a problem as the desire
for them."
Rather than "hatred," I'd prefer to say "aversion"-- but right!
Must we pretend that the middle way doesn't exist? As Freud and a
few other psychoanalytic geniuses emphasised, disregard (ignore,
suppress ignorantly) the body (to my way of thinking it's
body-mind) at your peril. We cannot convert "body" entirely to
"mind." Something precious gets lost.

Thanks for Gendun Rimpoche's poem--wonder where I was when it
appeared on the list. Also for the poems website.

We are embedded in Nature (capitalised as both idea and
reality)--- Onward Buddhist soldiers!!(soldiering on)
-----whether we admit it or not, what is left of Nature,
anyway~~~~~~~~~~.

Joanna

===========

-----Original Message-----
From: buddha-l-bounces at mailman.swcp.com
[mailto:buddha-l-bounces at mailman.swcp.com] On Behalf Of Erik
Hoogcarspel
Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2009 1:08 PM
To: Buddhist discussion forum
Subject: Re: [Buddha-l] FW: beauty--or art-- (?) and the
restraintof thesenses

Jayarava schreef:
> --- O
>> 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?
;-) 
>   
Certainly not, you barbarian! ;-)
> 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! 
>   
You might be surprised what interest in the sublime you'll find
if you 
would investigate it. Not only Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, but
also 
Wittgenstein, Mondriaan, Klee, Mereleau-Ponty and many others.
Kant even 
defined art as that which doesn't evoke desire. I think that the
ideal 
of Kant has been very well illustrated by the poem of Gendun Rche
which 
has been discussed before on this list 
[http://www.sinc.sunysb.edu/Clubs/buddhism/poetry/vajrasong.html]
. But 
there is much more, look at 
http://www.viewonbuddhism.org/resources/poetry.html and learn,
you 
follower of Calvin and Savornarola.
> 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.
>      
>   
Hatred for pleasant feelings is as much a problem as the desire
for them.

Erik

Info: www.xs4all.nl/~jehms  
Weblog: http://www.volkskrantblog.nl/pub/blogs/blog.php?uid=2950 
Productie: http://www.olivepress.nl





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