What Is Beauty?

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: / Its loveliness increases; it will never / Pass into nothingness . . . JOHN KEATS Endymion

Is beauty in the eye of the beholder or is there some objective standard, some Platonic realm of beauty? This is a question which has preoccupied aesthetes and philosophers for centuries.

Don Miguel Ruiz has no doubts: Beauty is just a concept we learned. (The Mastery of Love.)

Natural objects just are — they are neither beautiful nor ugly. These are emotive descriptions accorded to them by the minds of human beings. Good, bad, ugly, beautiful — we can't seem to avoid evaluating things in this way. In fact it's essentially human to do so: we have an in-built sense of ethics and aesthetics, which is useful and necessary to us.

Yet, also being human, we sometimes get things askew. We tangle and subvert the concept of ethics by committing crimes, by creating totalitarian societies etc. We tangle and subvert the concept of aesthetics by insisting that Leonardo paints more beautifully than a Neolithic cave painter, that person 'x' is more beautiful than person 'y'. We often confuse artistic skill with natural beauty. Artistic skills and their products are variable, but all natural beauty is beautiful and cannot be graded.

Beauty is a concept and a belief. The only difference between the beauty of one person and the beauty of another is the concept of beauty that people have. (The Mastery of Love.) A dandelion is as beautiful as an orchid. A frog is as beautiful as a prince. An old person is as beautiful as a newborn baby. My mother with old-age Alzheimer's was as beautiful as she was as an intelligent young woman. A so-called 'ugly' person is as beautiful as a so-called 'beautiful' person.

Our idea of artistic beauty is relative, and changes with time and according to culture. The classical Greek and Roman idea of beauty is quite different from the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi, which values incompleteness, impermanence and imperfection.

These are just a few thoughts about beauty which came into my mind this morning. I would love to hear your own thoughts. My own feeling is that the key to it all is semantics: yes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but at the same time I think there is definitely beauty per se out there (Michelangelo's David; a snowflake; the basic simplicity and unity of cellular life). It all depends on how you define the word 'beauty', and being clear what you actually mean when you use it.       

The Beauty That Lives Inside You

More quotes from The Mastery of Love by Don Miguel Ruiz:

You have to focus on the most wonderful relationship you can have: the relationship with yourself. It is not about being selfish; it is about self-love. These are not the same. You are selfish with yourself because there is no love there. You need to love yourself, and the love will grow more and more. Then, when you enter a relationship, you don't go into it because you need to be loved. It becomes a choice. You can choose someone if you want to, and you can see who he really is. When you don't need his love, you don't have to lie to yourself.

You are complete. When love is coming out of you, you are not searching for love because you afraid to be alone. When you have all that love for yourself, you can be alone and there's no problem. You are happy to be alone, and to share is also fun.

You are what you believe you are. There is nothing to do except to be just what you are. You have the right to feel beautiful and enjoy it. You can honor your body and accept it as it is. You don't need anyone to love you. Love comes from the inside. It lives inside us and is always there, but with that wall of fog, we don't feel it. You can only perceive the beauty that lives outside you when you feel the beauty that lives inside you. [My italics.]

When you become wise, your life is controlled by your heart, not your head.

Head or Heart

the heart says yes

the head says no

the head says stop

the heart says go

the heart acts

while the head reflects

the heart dreams

what the head rejects

the head speaks out

a warning word

the heart sings

like a soaring bird

the heart is fire

the head is ice

give me the heart

at any price?

THE SOLITARY WALKER

(Thanks to Wikimedia Commons for the image)

The Mastery Of Love

I'd heard of Don Miguel Ruiz for a while, but hadn't got round to reading any of his books. I'd known about his four agreements — (1) Be impeccable with your word (2) Don't take anything personally (3) Don't make assumptions (4) Always do your best (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide To Personal Freedom) — but that was about it. Even though I'd been reading texts on ancient wisdom, self-discovery and spiritual enlightenment for some time — by Carlos Castaneda, Sogyal Rinpoche, Thomas Merton, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Stephen Batchelor, David Brazier, the Dalai Lama, Eckhart Tolle and Osho among others — Ruiz had passed me by.

However, last night I picked up his book, The Mastery Of Love, and it blew me away. I read half of it straight off at one sitting (or rather at one lying — I was in bed at the time). For me this simple but profound work is one of those immediately life-transforming, once-read-never-to-be-forgotten books you encounter all too rarely in life. (I remember also having this experience when I first came across Krishnamurti in my early twenties.)

I scribbled these notes while reading the book — the highlighted pieces are straight from the text, the rest are my own interpretations and summaries:

When a man meets a woman, he makes an image of her from his point of view, and the woman makes an image of the man from her point of view. Then he tries to make her fit the image he makes for her, and she tries to make him fit the image she makes for him. Now there are six images between them. Of course, they are lying to each other, even if they don't know they are lying. Their relationship is based on fear; it is based on lies. It is not based on truth, because they cannot see through all that fog.

Ruiz analyses our relationships, and shows how most of our love relationships are ones of control, of neediness, of manipulation, of possessiveness and of selfishness (oh, how Proust understood this — I've been reading In Search Of Lost Time recently).

It doesn't matter how much you love someone, you are never going to be what that person wants you to be.

We can't be responsible for another person's happiness or unhappiness; we create our own happiness or unhappiness from inside. If we make another person responsible for our happiness or unhappiness, we become dependent on that person. Then that person will have the sole power to increase our happiness or take our happiness away. Not good. Ruiz compares this kind of unequal relationship with the relationship of the provider and the drug addict. 

We never really know another person — what's in their mind, all their thoughts, feelings and fantasies — even in close relationships such as husband and wife, or parent and child.

Every human being has a personal dream of life, and that dream is completely different from anyone else's dream. Every dreamer is going to dream in his own way.

We can never dream the same dream as another, but we need to respect each other's dreams.

We may have many relationships in our lives and, when it comes down to it, each relationship is unique and one-to-one, a relationship formed by two dreamers with separate dreams, but whose dreams touch and commingle to some extent within that relationship.

If our physical bodies consist of cells, then our dream-bodies consist of emotions, and our core emotions are fear (emotions such as anger, jealousy and sadness are just masks for fear) and love. Ruiz  goes on to contrast love with fear, and shows how fear is lacking and divisive in every way. Unlike fear, love has no obligations or expectations. It is based on respect. Love does not pity, but has compassion (two very different things). Love is responsible. Love is kind. Love is generous and unconditional. Love has justice.

We are not responsible for others, for the other halves of our relationships.

We don't have the right to change anyone else, and no one has the right to change us.

You cannot change other people. They are what they are. Love them for what they are. Love yourself for what you are, warts and all.

I've been shocked by reading this book into realising how much I've tried to control some relationships in my own life, tried to influence and change other people, to make them conform to some predetermined image. No, no, no! You can't do it! It just brings misery and frustration. It's all through fear, really — fear of the autonomy and unique mystery of the other person, fear of what they might think of you, fear of what they might do to you,  Fear and insecurity! Time to move on. I feel such relief.