Beauty, Consciousness and Buddhism

Susan Gallagher

He who has allowed the beauty of that world to penetrate his soul goes away no longer a mere observer. For the object perceived and the perceiving soul are no longer two things separated from one another, but the perceiving soul has [now] within itself the perceived object. (Plotinus, First Ennead, 8:1)

I would like to discuss, in what can only here be an introductory foray into the subject, the relationship between a consciously developed aesthetic sensitivity and attunement to natural beauty and its potential conductivity towards an experience of the transcendent, with particular reference to its use and occurrence in Buddhist traditions.

The mysticism scholar R.C. Zaehner coined the phrase 'Nature Mysticism' with reference to the traditions of Zen and Taoism, noting the strong emphasis of nature contemplation within those traditions. It is to this category of nature mystisicm I will be referring in distinction from the more primitive shamanist concept of nature mysticism which often involves nature worship and animism and which tends to anthromorphise the forces of nature.

Zaehner defined the mystical experience as 'a unitive experience', a 'sense of union or even identity with something other than oneself' (1957). This experience of blending with ones surroundings and a sense of unity with the world exists consistently across all cultures and religions traditions (Foreman 1990), from the Tao Te Ching, the Zen poetry of Dogen and Rumi's Sufi poetry in the East to the writings of the Romantics such as Wordsworth, Underhill, Thoreau, Whitman, Emerson and James among others in the West. In the Kausitaki Upanishad we are told 'Thou art this all.'

Many of us have some direct experience of the uplifting effect of natural beauty – often it is a stunning sunset, the deep stillness of a forest, or the rhythmic ebb and flow of waves crashing on rocks – these experiences take us beyond our habitual self preoccupation and connect us to the world around us. These experiences of nature allow us to transcend ourselves, to enlarge our sense of beingness in identification with our surroundings and can culminate in the profound insights and a realisation of the essential unity behind existence. Meister Eckhart described his experience of this unity with nature when, 'All blades of grass, wood, and stone, all things are One,' and Byron wrote, 'Are not the mountains, waves and skies a part of me and of my soul, as I of them?' Aldous Huxley reported a similar experience: 'Of course the Dharma-body of the Buddha was the hedge at the bottom of the garden. At the same time, and no less obviously, it was these flowers, it was anything that I - or rather the blessed Not-I - cared to look at.'

The Zen master Thich Nich Hahn goes further and expresses both his experience of unity with the natural world as well as the realisation of the interconnectivity of everything - 'Look deeply: I arrive in every second to be a bud on a spring branch to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile learning to sing in my new nest to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.'

Within Buddhism the natural world is little mentioned. An exception to this is found in the Ariyapariyesana Sutta where Buddha himself expresses a preference for meditation in locations of natural beauty: 'Seeking the supreme state of sublime peace, I wandered... until... I saw a delightful stretch of land and a lovely woodland grove, and a clear flowing river with a delightful forest so I sat down thinking, 'Indeed, this is an appropriate place to strive for the ultimate realization of... Nirvana' (Ariyapariyesana Sutta, Majjhima Nikaya, 26.17).

Despite these indications, discussion about natural beauty as an aid on the path to enlightenment is sparse in Buddhist texts particularly within Indian Buddhism. In this more renunciative school the phenomenal is considered to be devoid of any real substance and is therefore considered to be unworthy of further consideration. The doctrine of renunciation of the material world is perhaps largely responsible for this lack of focus on external conditions. Therefore the Indian meditator might be found among the burning and rotting human remains along the Ganges. He may be disinclined to seek out beauty, being apprehensive that desire and attachment may result. In contrast the Zen monk can be found in a garden next to a flowering cherry tree – deep in contemplation of perhaps the very same impermanence that the Indian Buddhist is also engaged. To quote Francis Cook at some length:

While both Indian and Chinese Buddhists understood emptiness as being synonymous with interdependence, the Indians emphasized the point that, because of this pervasive interdependence, things lack any ultimate reality and are unworthy of attachment. For the Indians, emptiness as the absence of any enduring permanence, substantiality, and value was of paramount importance. The Chinese chose to stress the point that emptiness is the interdependent relationship of real phenomenal events. The Indian view tends to be negative in its devaluation of events, and reduces them to the level of insignificance and triviality. The Chinese view tends to raise all events to a common level of supreme value by seeing their crucial roles in the nexus of interconditionality (Cook 1979, p.368)

The variation between Indian Buddhism and Chinese and Japanese Buddhism can largely be accounted for by the influence of Taoism in China and the shamanistic Shinto religion in Japan. As a result of this the Indian and oriental schools of Buddhism diverge widely on the subject of natural beauty as an aid to the refinement of consciousness and eventual enlightenment. It is therefore to Zen that we can turn for further elaboration on the subject.

A Zen monk asked his master "How may I enter the Way?" His Master points to a mountain stream and says "Do you hear the murmur of the stream? There you may enter."

This example illustrates the influence of Taoism on the Buddhism of China and Japan where aspects of the phenomenal world are taken as metaphors as in the well known 'ox herder' series, for example. Nature is valued for its role in assisting with an understanding of all aspects of human existence such as impermanence and insubstantiality. The relationship between the visible and invisible, the internal and the external is experienced directly by the Zen monk in his own loss of ego as he concentrates on an external object. Separation ceases and he experiences the object as part of himself and 'Man becomes the bamboo, man becomes the flower' (Isutsu, in Heine 1997).

The Chinese school greatly influenced by Nagarjuna put forward a midde way between emptiness and form which does not require the same degree of renunciation as Indian Buddhism. Attachment to form or emptiness is carefully avoided, allowing the practitioner to use the world of form and specifically the beauty of nature as a tool in developing non discursive thought and non-dual awareness.

The psychological effect of natural beauty on the feeling response is widely observed within the oriental traditions. According to the Japanese author Takayama Chogyu, 'knowledge aims at truth, while the feelings culminate in beauty (agreeableness)' (ref). He is suggesting that beauty can have a refining effect on our feelings. To the Indian Buddhist the emotions are a by product of ignorance to be renounced and detached from. In the oriental schools a greater role is given to the role of the emotions. It is acknowledged that they can serve as a bridge towards a greater refinement of feeling as a result of the contemplation of impermanence in a more positive light. To feel a range of emotions besides even the loftier feelings induced by a contemplation of non-duality is acceptable within the oriental traditions. For example, while meditating on impermanence while watching autumn leaves falling one might feel poignancy. Heine (1997) suggests that "An aesthetic response to forms is essential to the attainment of an authentic subjectivity and a creative self-illuminating awareness that is immersed in nature beyond the vacillations of personal emotion". To encounter a direct experience of feeling without reflective or discursive thought we can perhaps learn to experience feeling states without sentimentality or personal reflection or attachment. The twelfth century Zen Teacher Dogen often made use of the beauty of nature to enhance the deeply moving experience of following the Buddhist path:

The unspoiled colors of a late summer night,
The wind howling through the lofty pines –
The feel of the autumn approaching;
The swaying bamboos keep resonating,
And shedding tears of dew at dawn;
Only those who exert themselves fully
Will attain the Way,
But even if you abandon all for the ancient path of meditation,
You can never forget the meaning of sadness (pp. 133-134).

Recent attempts by Transpersonal Psychologists at classifying these experiences have resulted in some lively dialogue. A "pure consciousness event" (PCE) is defined by Foreman as "a wakeful though content less consciousness" an experience of inner silence resulting from the slowing down of the thoughts during meditation. He also identifies the dual mystical state (DMS) where subject and object remain but a witness is present and the Unitive mystical state (UMS) where object/subject fluidity is experienced such as during the Buddhist contentless experiences of sunyata and Zen's satori. This corresponds to Wilber's four states of unity. While experiences of unity and peak experiences exists throughout all stages of growth it is debated by Ferrer among others whether Wilber's emphasis on growth through rigid stages is correct.

For Wilber, all nature mysticism occurs at a pre egoic stage, and according to him it is here that the mistake of the "pre trans fallacy" can be made; the pre egoic confused with the post egoic due to certain phenomenological similarities. Wilber groups classifies all nature mysticism within the first of his four major Samadhi or mystical union states which are gross, subtle, causal and non dual states equivalent to nirmanakaya and according to Wilber "those should not be confused with Zen or Vedanta, for the latter push through to causal formlessness (Dharmakaya, nirvikalpa samadhi, jnana Samadhi" and "The 'deep self' of ecopsychology is not to be confused with the True Self of Zen, Ati of Dzogchen". "Far from improving the human condition, the regressive temptation threatens to worsen it. . . . many people are tempted to flee back to a pre-egoic state of awareness, the mythic or even magical state. . . . they are profoundly atavistic, hearkening back to magical modes of awareness".

Contrary to Wilber's blanket categorization of nature mysticism as a gross realm (because it deals with the world that can be seen with the senses) experience it seems from the descriptions that all four levels of his own unitive states and Foreman's pure consciousness event dual consciousness state and unitive mystical state occur. Foreman is more cautious than Wilber in any assertion about the sequential nature of this process and does not denigrate nature mysticism to the lowest unitive state, in fact quite the contrary. He asserts that permanent change takes place in "two quantum leaps in experience; typically they develop sequentially". The dualistic mystical state occurs when inner silence has developed as a backdrop for thoughts and experiences. Next comes the unitive mystical state where full unity is experienced with the objects and surroundings "States akin to this have been called 'extrovertive-' or sometimes 'nature-' mysticism; but I prefer to call it the unitive mystical state".

Foreman (1998) describes the result of long term meditation which goes beyond ritual and formal practice "Regular and long-term meditation, according to many traditions, leads to advanced experiences, known in general as 'enlightenment'. Their discriminating feature is a deep shift in epistemological structure: the experienced relationship between the self and one's perceptual objects changes profoundly. In many people this new structure becomes permanent". The example of Bernadette Roberts is valuable and quoted here at some length. She describes a change that was perhaps the culmination of her many years of meditation and prayer "I was standing on a windy hillside looking down over the ocean when a seagull came into view, gliding, dipping, playing with the wind. I watched it as I'd never watched anything before in my life. I almost seemed to be mesmerized; it was as if I was watching myself flying, for there was not the usual division between us. Yet, something more was there than just a lack of separateness, 'something' truly beautiful and unknowable. Finally I turned my eyes to the pine-covered hills behind the monastery and still, there was no division, only something 'there' that was flowing with and through every vista and particular object of vision. . . . What I had [originally] taken as a trick of the mind was to become a permanent way of seeing and knowing. I was never to revert back to the usual relative way of seeing separateness or individuality" (1984).

Clarke (1995) states that "Consciousness as we know it arises from the interplay of mind developing within the non-local aspect of the universe, with matter, which is the localised aspect of this same universe". Foreman also suggests that consciousness may be non localized : "the mind may be non-localized, like a field, and that experience arises from some sort of interplay between non-localized awareness and the localized brain". He goes on to consider the possibility that "Brain cells may receive, guide, arbitrate, or canalize an awareness which is somehow transcendental to them. The brain may be more like a receiver or transformer for the field of awareness than its generator: less like a magnet than like a TV receiver".

Pure consciousness events can be triggered by natural beauty which could help the brain to tune into a frequency that produces such experiences. There seems to be a door within the natural world, which allows us relatively easy access to unitive states given some development of aesthetic attunement. It is perhaps a catalyst for further development of and for the refinement of our feelings, an aid to control and steady thought and a method whereby we can access gradually higher levels of unitive experiences culminating in permanent change.

To be alone
It is a color that
cannot be named:
This mountain where cedars rise
Into the autumn dusk
(Jakuren, 12th century)

References

Clarke, C. (1995). The Non Locality of Mind. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2, 231-240.

Cooke, F. (1979). Causation in the Chinese Hua-Yen Tradition. Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 7, 367-385

Forman, Robert. (1998). What Does Mysticism Have to Teach Us About Consciousness? Journal of Consciousness Studies, 5 (2).

Heine, S. (1997). The Zen Poetry Of Dōgen: Verses from the Mountain of Eternal Peace. By Takayama Chogyū "Bikan ni Tsuite no Kansatsu", appears in Takayama Rinjirō, Chogyū Boston: Charles E. Tuttle Co. Inc., 1997

Isutsu from http://www.hummingbirdworld.com/spiritnature/buddhist_nature.htm April06

King, M. http://www.jnani.org/mrking/index.htm

Beardsley. M.C. (1966). Aesthetics from Classical Greece to the Present: A Short History. The University of Alabama Press.

Marra, M. (1999). Modern Japanese Aesthetics. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Roberts, B. (1984). The Experience of No-Self. Boulder: Shambala.

Victor, C.F. (1984). The Spirit of the Huckleberry. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press.

Walsh, R. "The Spirit of Evolution" http://cogweb.ucla.edu/CogSci/Walsh_on_Wilber_95.html

Wilber, K. http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/books/psych_model/psych_model6.cfm/

Zaehner R. C. (1957). Mysticism, Sacred and Profane. Oxford: Oxford University Press.