Excerpts from’ The Four Manifestations of Beauty’ and my little prayer(24/Aug/08)

With any form of beauty there are four levels of ability. This is true of painting, calligraphy, literature, music, dance….

The first level is called Competence-
The ability to draw the same thing over and over in the same strokes, with the same force, the same rhythm, the same trueness. This kind of beauty is ordinary.

The second level is called Magnificent-
This one goes beyond skill. Its beauty is unique – it conveys both strength and solitude. A lesser painting can capture one quality and not the other.

The third level is called Divine-
It’s like a painting of leaves – leaves which are visible only as shadows blown by an invisible wind, the stalk being more a suggestion of what is missing. And yet the shadows are more alive than the original leaves that obscured light. A person seeing it will be wordless to describe how this is done. Try as he might, the same painter cannot capture the feeling of this painting, only a shadow of the shadow

The fourth level is greater- it is within each mortal’s nature to find it. We can sense it only if we do not try to sense it. It occurs without motivation or desire or knowledge of what may result. It is pure. It is what innocent people have. It is what old masters regain once they have lost their minds and become young children again. If for ex: one looks at a painting of an Oval- it’s titled inside the middle of a Bamboo stalk – It is the oval that one would see inside-either looking up or down. It is the simplicity of being within, no reason or explanation for being there. It is natural wonder that anything exists in relation to another, an inky oval to a page of white paper, a person to a bamboo stalk, the viewer to the stalk – this fourth level is called Effortless


Krishna,

In our quest to become competent we fail to notice the power of the Effortless,
In all the beauty you sow, we seek many manifestations,
Some shallow, some deep, and some unreal,
The quest of the Divine,
Becomes timeless and all consuming,
Its magnificence is hard to resist yet difficult to gain…

Help us to walk towards you with the effortlessness of the flute that makes music out of the notes of ones breath,
Every single breath is yours alone and yours forever,
In the joy of those notes envelop and embrace us,
Such that we cease all mortal competition

Divine is thee,
Divine are we,
Prayer to you will be,
Effortlessly let us celebrate the you in we..