We are asking, what is beauty?
A beautiful poem, a beautiful picture...
a beautiful tree in a solitary field...
the beauty of a wave...
the quiet beauty of a blue sea...
and the beauty of great mountains...
the immensity, their dignity...
their immovability...
and the line against the blue sky, snow capped.
And all the museums in the world...
with their ancient sculptures...
modern paintings...
and the classic statuary...
most of us have seen all these...
and we say when we look at them...
how extraordinarily beautiful they are.
If you have seen the Parthenon in Greece for the first time...
you almost go on your knees to the beauty of the structure.
And when you see a beautiful man, or a woman, or a child specially...
and you are breathless for a moment...
with all the beauty of this world.
And does beauty lie in the perceiver?
You understand my question?
Is beauty a matter of instruction...
being well informed about all the paintings in the world...
who painted it from modern Picasso...
to the ancient Masaccio and so on...
to be well informed, to talk about it...
you know, play with it, is all that beauty?
So what is beauty?
When do you perceive beauty?
In the face, in the mountain...
in a tree, or the slip of a moon...
when the first moon appears...
just a sliver...
and the quietness of a still evening...
when do you perceive all this?
And the word 'beauty'...
seems to suffice for most of us, just to say...
'How beautiful it is', and go on the next thing.
You see marvellous paintings of Leonardo da Vinci...
or Michelangelo and so on...
and then go off and have tea.
Right?
This is what we generally do.
We never really go into the question of what is beauty.
And when do you perceive this sense of immense...
immensity and the truth of beauty?
When you see a great mountain...
with the deep valleys and the snow...
against the blue sky...
aren't you for a second...
by the dignity and the majesty of the mountain...
for a second you have forgotten all your problems...
you have forgotten all your misery...
confusion, sorrows, and all the rest of it...
and that great immensity of a snow-capped peak...
drives you away...
drives your self away.
Right? Haven't you noticed all this?
So beauty can only exist when the self is not.
You understand?
When the mind, when the brain is not chattering...
caught in a net of words...
when it is really utterly quiet...
when there is total absence of the 'me'...
the self, the ego, the persona...
then you really see the extraordinary sense of beauty...
of the world, of the tree and the sky.