Art, Beauty & Creation

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Many of us are regularly trying to exit from ourselves; and as art offers a respectable and easy means of doing so, it plays a significant role the lives of many people.


"Art divorced from life has no great significance. When art is separated from our daily living, when there is a gap between our natural life and our efforts on the canvas, in marble or in words, then art becomes merely an expression of our superficial desire to escape from the reality of what it is"




Praise and adulation, when taken to heart, inflate the ego and destroy receptivity and the worship of success in any field is obviously detrimental to intelligence. Sensitivity to beauty and to ugliness does not come about through attachment; it comes with love, when there are no self-created conflicts. When we are inwardly poor, we indulge in every form of outward show, in wealth, power and possessions. When our hearts are empty, we collect things. If we can afford it, we surround ourselves with objects that we consider beautiful, and because we attach enormous importance to them, we are responsible for much misery and destruction.

Since our hearts are withered and we have forgotten how to be kindly, how to look at the stars, at the trees, at the reflections in the water, we require the stimulation of pictures and jewels, of books and endless amusements. We are constantly seeking new excitements, new thrills; we crave an increasing variety of sensations. Sensations can be bought, but not the love of beauty. When there is love in our hearts, we do not search for a way of putting words together.
Creativeness comes into being when there is constant awareness of the ways of the mind, and of the hindrances it has built for itself. Creativeness is a state of being in which the conflicts and sorrows of the self are absent, a state in which the mind is not caught up in the demands and pursuits of desires. When the mind is utterly still without being forced or trained into quiescence, when it is silent because the self is inactive, then there is creation.

The love of beauty may express itself in a song, in a smile, or in silence; but most of us have no inclination to be silent. We have not the time to observe the birds, the passing clouds, because we are too busy with our pursuits and pleasures. When there is no beauty in our hearts, how can we help the children to be alert and sensitive? We try to be sensitive to beauty while avoiding the ugly; but avoidance of the ugly makes for insensitivity. If we would develop sensitivity in the young, we ourselves must be sensitive to beauty and to ugliness, and must take every opportunity to awaken in them the joy there is in seeing, not only the beauty that man has created, but also the beauty of nature.