Beautifully Ugly

Beauty has no standard, or for that matter any logic. Same is with Ugliness. What makes it beautiful or ugly is not the creator but the perceiver. It is about the mind, and the intellect in action.

Images and thoughts have profound effects on the beliefs and understanding in people.
Sometimes it is the herd mentality that forces the mind to create a false standard in people's mind. Mona Lisa for example is considered beautiful by millions. But then there are some who do not think so. This becomes a classic example about the concept of beauty of a conditioned mind. It's never yours. It is a collective opinion, not your reaction.

My idea of beauty is in curiosity, in spontaneity, in reactions...I find the curiosity, the eagerness, the excitement in a kid more beautiful. I see the progression of life in these little nuances. The growing up of children, them reacting to the world with an unconditioned mind is pure beauty. Their reaction to little things, at a given moment, is so pure. How can you not call it the moment of creation of Beauty. The creation takes a moment, and because it is true beauty, those moments live with you for a lifetime. It is not a result of conditioning - of either your mind or that of the child. Moments such as these are about pure innocence. Like pure innocence is "Beauty", there is beauty in the "Innocence".

Beauty is not about seeking attention or attraction. Beauty is about capturing your mind, that realization, about the purity that exists at that given moment.....Nature is a prime example. you see it in the moonlight, in the flower, in the birds.... You are captivated and devoured by the landscape one day, some other day it is just ordinary. Beauty therefore, is not a quality of the object, it's a function of your mind!!

Beauty is not limited, not finite, not absolute. It is as much in the abstract as it is in the known. We believe in everything as a consideration of others.What will it take - for us to transcend and rise above the self realization and self affirmation.

Beauty is the state of being, state of our Mind. Its that moment of perception that recognizes the Beauty. There is beauty in everything, some perceive it some, some don't. What's beautiful to you one day is ugly some other time. What's ugly to you...is beautiful to some one else. Duality is a fact, it exists. It's the function of your mind and its perception, at that moment, at that time.

That said, even the ugly is Beautifully Ugly. I would hate to think there is anything Ugly...after all they say we have a Beautiful Mind.

Shadows

Shadows were moving back and forth trying to get my attention. The train had just left the station and I could see the landscape changing as the shadows lengthened in response to the setting sun. I was busy absorbing everything as this was my last trip to my native before I left the country for another life journey.

Shadows! a blend of 'darkness' and 'light'. There are no shadows without either of them. They invite us to read them, understand them and interpret them. Staring at them is like dreaming while you are awake.

Shadows are the absences of light.
Shadows are the reason for light to exist.
Shadows are a result of light.
Shadows are the virtue of the light they absorb.
There is light in every shadow, like there is a reason for every action

Shadows like your conscience do not reflect, you reflect on them.
Like the conscience is your follower, shadows are the followers of the object.

Shadows exist in every landscape around us, but we see the object not the shadow. Our Shadow does not come across as shiny and bubbly like our image, but remember Shadow is our guardian spirit that appears as a disguised voice - "Our conscience"

Like the Shadows punctuate the magnanimity of the scenery with a perspective, our conscience reminds us to be humble when we shine, teaches us to combine innocence with wisdom, that power be combined with compassion and love and your dreams be sprinkled with material wisdom and expression.

Conscience will exist as long you exist, you can choose to ignore your conscience but cannot shut them.

Similarly, Shadows themselves are a hole in the light and it is a fact that You cannot make a hole in a Shadow.

StreetLight

I sat watching the street light in the early morning on Diwali day, stray thoughts....as usual engulfed me.

Sometimes, I thought, we treat life like that area of illumination around the street light, forgetting there is something outside that narrow space...

Looking under a streetlight to find a lost object at night is an apt metaphor for classic approaches to our search in life. You typically search for answers to your life problems within a region or the space surrounding the knowledge we possess. It may not be where the answer is, but it’s an easy place to search! In practice the “streetlight” can be narrow and bright, or be broad and dim, somewhat like the knowledge and wisdom we possess.

Searching under the streetlight, is seemingly desirable, but if the object is actually “in the dark” it is a futile endeavor.

An old story has it that a man came across a drunk looking under a street lamp one night. The drunk said he was looking for his keys which he had dropped. After helping him search unsuccessfully under the lamp he asked the drunk exactly where he had lost his keys. The drunk replied, "Somewhere over there in the dark, but I can't see a thing over there so I'm looking under the light instead."

Like the drunk man, sometimes we are looking for our answers at wrong places.

Borrowed from a couplet; In life, I believe we have to change the way, we look at things – so that the things we look at "change"!