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I've always found the phrase "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" a fascinating phrase. And as a Buddhist even more so.
I remember, on retreat, I had a brief flash of insight when I heard a bird singing in the forest. The birdsong was, I felt, beautiful and for me seemed to deepen the silence of the wood. I asked why the bird was singing. The answer came almost immediately. That bird was singing because of suffering. It was singing because of its own cravings and desires. The desire for food, which all creatures have, and the desire to procreate, which again, all creatures have. Including us. So at a very base level, it was singing because of suffering. Suffering induced by these very simple desires.
This may seem like a very obvious and straightforward conclusion. However, that day in the forest I felt that answer very intimately and suddenly the whole beauty of the forest was filled with suffering. Suffering was all around me and I now understood that very basic message given by the Buddha and given in the first two noble truths. That in life there is always suffering and that suffering is due to our own cravings and desires.
Back in the retreat, I discussed this with the retreat leader. Feeling quite content with my understanding I had to start rethinking when he said, "yes, but what makes you think the birdsong is beautiful?" At the time I must confess to feeling a little deflated by this (in itself, not particularly mindful of me) but it has led me to further meditations and thinking and therefore to this article.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Actually, I think my understanding has now deepened a little. I think that suffering is necessary for us to appreciate beauty. What is beauty? I feel now, in my meditations that actually beauty is a mental formation born out of our deep appreciation of suffering. The Buddhist view is that Buddha-hood is within us all. I think this may be a direct example of this. Beauty and our view of something as beautiful is a direct result of our appreciation of the suffering in our lives.
When we see something as beautiful, we see it (or hear it or taste it or feel it or smell it!) on many levels. Initially there will be the simple appreciation of the direct colour, texture, taste, smell etc. Then something deeper happens. Beauty touches our 'soul'.
In order to try to illustrate this, I have picked a subject which, for me, invokes beauty. A sunset. I love sunsets! I've picked this deliberately as it is particularly difficult to see the suffering in a sunset! I have meditated on this for some time and really, this article talks through these meditations.
In order to set out my conclusions I need to outline the steps I have gone through in my meditations. I had a suspicion that the different levels of the appreciation of beauty line up with the Buddhist view of the pañca khandha or the five aggregates. The more I meditate on this, the more I feel the interconnection of all things and therefore the intimate nature and connection we have with the suffering in our experience, and everything else's experience living on this earth and therefore the deep sense of beauty we sometimes feel. The pañca khandha takes us through the 5 base things that make up our appreciation of the world around us. Form, feelings, perception, formation and consciousness. I have approached the sunset from the perspective of the five aggregates.
First and foremost form. A sunset just is. It is essential a complex form of dependents arising. The time of day, the position of the earth in relation to the sun, the texture of the atmosphere, the clouds in the sky, whether over water or land, any pollution or other particles in the sky, the texture of the land (cityscape, fields, mountains etc). When I observe the sunset and meditate I first try to see the sunset as it is. A mix of colours and there positions relating to each other. The perspective, the position I am sitting etc. It is extremely difficult to do this because what arises next happens in an instant. We naturally travel through the 5 aggregates in "a twelfth of a finger-snap" and jump straight to beauty. Concentrated mindfulness is required to get anywhere close to understanding this. But if I can just break this down, and observe what happens next, then I can start to appreciate something. The tricky thing is that beautiful sunsets don't happen all that often in rainy Bedfordshire so the opportunity to practice meditation on a sunset directly is rare. However, in my meditations I have experienced that our minds do have the ability to recall the 'form' of something, i.e. an image, separately to the other 4 aggregates. Fascinating that, I think. It is almost that when we remember something, we rebuild our experience in real-time by running through the five aggregates again. This is both fascinating and encouraging. If my mind works in this way then I can break apart my perceptions, thoughts, consciousness within my meditations at any time and start to understand some of those deeply carved ruts in my mind, and maybe start to smooth them out.
So, back to the sunset. I meditate on feelings. A feeling in Buddhism is a very base-level mental formulation. Not, as we understand in the west as an emotion. It is simply the labeling of liking, dis-liking or a feeling of neutrality. With gentle meditation on the sunset I can feel my mind latch on to aspects of the image. The deepest red in the image and label 'liking'. I think that with a complex form like a sunset, we don't just go through the whole five aggregates in one go for the whole image. I find that I jump around and notice elements of the image. The colour of the foreground, the scale, the clouds in the sky and I feel myself noticing and labeling. Liking, disliking etc. Neutrality is the most interesting I think and just as important. Elements of the image go unnoticed until you break down the aggregates like this. Then I notice the things I don't usually notice because they are neutral to me. Maybe I noticed them before, but subconsciously. But now, the image becomes even more alive and complete. I also think that I maybe noticing feelings with one aspect of the sunset when I have already moved on to perception for another aspect. But to be honest, this is beyond me for the moment.
But certainly perception arises next. I label. Simply that. Red, pink, tree, green, smog, distant, near. I feel my minds craving and desire to label, to name, to describe. Perception can be both fascinating and frustrating. I remember once as a child traveling with my parents in a car through a town. As we traveled through the town I noticed how my mind leapt on all the signs. Straight away I heard the signs shouting in my mind and, rather oddly, I found myself getting frustrated that I couldn't shut my mind up. All these signs shouting at me. With the sunset, when I meditate on it, the labeling deepens. This has the effect of slowing down the five aggregates. The more I examine the image and meditate on perception, the slower the process seems to go. I guess the devil is in the detail!
But we haven't got to suffering yet. The suffering, I think, comes next. The next aggregate is Formation (saCsk
Andy Spragg is an experienced Tai Chi instructor with 16 years of teaching experience. Andy is the owner of Re-Vitalise, a company specialising in weekend breaks and retreats in Tai Chi and meditation. These are full board retreats held in tranquil locations throughout the UK.
Andy is a Buddhist and focuses on the synergy between Tai Chi and Buddhist meditation in his teaching.
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