Beauty“Our human love for beauty is that indescribable madness that the soul rouses to realign our psyche to its rightful path. True beauty is far more than the obvious superficial kind of beauty – it is our love shining through our feelings, truth shining through our thoughts, and joy shining through our works…”
— Aaravindha Himadra There is beauty in dust. Dust plays a central part in in my daily cleaning ritual—I love the way a room sparkles after dust is removed. There is beauty in the satisfaction of sweeping a floor, making a bed with care, wiping a surface and cleaning dishes. These actions are simple and yet they create aesthetic order that nourishes the senses with beauty. An absence of clutter in a room brings with it a presence of space, an openness within my inner space that allows energy to move, perspectives to expand. One of the ways I experience great joy is through creating beauty in my environment. Our home is built according to Vastu principles, Vastu being the ancient Indian science of bringing Spirit into physical manifestation in the form of a structure, building or home. Thus, the physical space becomes “alive” with prana or life force so that a beautiful and harmonious quality emerges. I can feel this invisible quality of energetic flow and I know that the house is alive and the elements are being honored – fire, earth, air, water and space. Each corner of our home honors its respective element with the kitchen in the fire corner, the bathroom in the water corner, the meditation room in the air corner and the bedroom in the earth corner. The brahmastan or center of the house is open with no furniture, no walls, no pipes, just space. Light moves through the brahmastan from all directions and the beauty this creates is tangible. Nature demonstrates its own exquisite radiance full of light and color and sublime form and, at the same time, nature has its own inherent fierceness and darkness and an impermanence that can be awe-inspiring. Beauty in nature can be experienced as a tree in full bloom emitting a sweet perfumed scent into the air and also as a tree bare and stark, rotting at its roots and brittle at its branches. Witnessing the shadow of storm clouds move across the high desert landscape releasing their moisture in dark sheets that fall to the earth is a welcome form of beauty, especially as the monsoon rains soak into the dry, dusty ground. Beauty is simplicity and beauty is complexity. It is a single perfect rose and a cacophony of animals and birds. It can invoke a sense of peace and delight and it can settle in as heartbreak and loss. Internal beauty is an acceptance and a surrender to what arises and equally to what disappears in life. Beauty is resting in life, resting in love. It can be described as … “…seeing the whole reality as the harmonious and joyous pulsating union of various sets of complicated opposites.” — Tantra Illuminated Beauty can also be experienced in ritual acts such as a waving of lights to ones chosen deity, the humble act of bowing down and surrendering to the Will of God, the preparation and savoring of delicious food, allowing oneself to be carried away by a piece of music or losing oneself in ecstatic dance. The experience of beauty can arise through simple acts such as gazing at sacred art or a crackling fire, or observing the life force leave the body. Death has its own beauty. I was blessed to midwife my mother as she birthed out of the body. To feel her vast presence in the room and to sense her freedom and release from a dying body was a unique and exceptional form of beauty. To “let the senses meet their objects fully” is the Tantric practice of awareness. To really see and experience what life is offering in every moment requires me to slow down, take in the object, the person, the room, the field, the view and linger there so that I can absorb it, feel it and sense it. Beauty exists in everything. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” and the beholder must rest her eyes on the object and adore its fullness, its isness and see its radiance, its life force and its loveliness. Beauty connects us to reality and to the ground of being, which includes our own basic sanity. It is easy to gaze upon what is commonly perceived as beautiful as it bounces back to us as symmetry, elegance, vivid color, grace and order. But when we are able to gaze upon death, destruction, chaos and disorder and see the transformative power of friction, the elegant quality of disintegration and the wonder of the void, then we have opened ourselves to the fullness of beauty. As I clean our compost toilet and take in the pungent smell of the body’s waste materials, set it outside in the warm radiant sun to dry out, then feed it to the trees for nourishment and watch the trees flourish and house the vast array of birds visiting our tiny corner of the world, I can appreciate the beauty of it all. To complete my cleaning ritual, I light a stick of sandalwood incense and inhale the fragrant aroma that wafts through the space. I watch the thin spirals of smoke catch in the morning light and see the dust particles begin to settle on all of the surfaces in their beautiful dance of disarray. I take a deep breath and rest in the acceptance of the beauty, the contrasts, the surprises and the energy of it all. And I know that I will dust again tomorrow. Lesley Ball Nov 11th, 2024
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