The Ugly and the Beautiful
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| A path leads to the gate at front of author's home |
Our world has both, the beautiful and the ugly at different
times and different places. While focusing on the ugly tends to dissipate us,
the beautiful charges and inspires. Yet, it does become necessary to focus
on the ugly whenever a desire arises to see it eradicated. It is from this
point of view that this blog focuses time and again on it, as in the last post
attention was drawn to severe income and wealth inequalities that exist in
our world today causing severe distress for very many humans and an earlier one on the violence humans perpetuate even in acquisition of food. While talking about this in a group discussion, a friend, Aditya Thakur, said that
these have always been around and even if the one percent of the world were
removed, another one percent would come to replace them. My answer was that some
such things did happen after the French revolution and the communist
revolutions of bygone eras, yet mankind is not without hope because the
Scandinavian countries have abolished income inequalities to a great extent and
it is up to others to evolve up to those standards first and then go beyond.
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| A snap from a back door of the author's home |
Yet, as said in the very first paragraph if we keep focusing
on what is wrong with our world and what is ugly we shall only dissipate
ourselves and it is necessary to return a focus to the beautiful. If we
cannot find something beautiful in man’s doing charged with greed and lust, we
shall certainly find that beauty in nature, in distant mountain lakes, villages
and towns, and one can always bring a bit of that beauty home by planting some
trees and bushes around one’s home as shown in the two photos of this blog, one
snapped from the front door of my home and a the second from the back door. And
every morning as we get up we can then enjoy the lovely song of birds that
come to play amongst these trees while we greet the morning sun that rises from
behind them heralding a new day and a new beginning, for every night one
goes through a minor death as one goes to sleep and wakes up to a new life
every morning, until comes that final call to take us to more distant morning
in a new place and new body full of joy and music, provided we just take a
little time off from our lust, greed and anger that rises from a dark
bottomless pit and may draw us in there instead.
Comments
Very rarely do I find it hard to find beauty in people. And that's only if I don't meet them myself. Like hearing about these rapists in the news who tore out the sexual organs of the girl they raped and killed her by forcing her to drink acid. You think how can these men be beautiful. They are not just ugly but pure evil. But I'm sure if I were to spend some time with them I'd find a beautiful person gone terribly wrong for whatever reasons.
I believe from the core of my being that every human being is inherently good. We do a lot of bad things but still we all are just trying to live.
Individuals are beautiful but when they get together and form a society and a system, it gets ugly. But this only means that there is lots of hope to make things better.
Yes for sure at the core a human is pure love and truth and nothing can be more beautiful than that, it is only in association with a mind gone astray, and covered with layers of what is mentioned in the post at end - love, greed and anger that we end up with a vile and evil thing so that it seems that the soul is that of a foul animal hiding in a human body.
The other day, a classmate of my Sanskrit class told me that Indians are similar to Japanese that he made many long term Indian friends since he worked for an Indian company. He said we could connect with Indian people. I thought it interesting. The classmate and I talked only briefly so I didn't quite know what he exactly meant.
But reading this post, Eddy's comment, and your response, I feel as though I understand what the classmate meant. Japanese also have tendency to see good in almost all situations.
I know it's tough to see the horrible criminals, but maybe our past soft attitude is to be blamed for the current problems. I was just thinking about a similar problem today when I saw a poster about anti Human Trafficking campaign. I posted it on FB.
True the Japanese and Indians share a common Asian heritage and in some ways are more similar to each other than those from the west, but there are regional differences as even within different parts of the same country. Education helps a human rise above differences.
The way I see it, beautiful and ugly exist at the same time.
I think the rape issue is coming from our long and thick culture of not respecting females. Most females know that but never fight back enough because it causes us unpleasant results. It's in our daily scenes and from the words people speak.
I'm glad Indians now have a female Education Minister without high degrees. I think it is a symbolic gesture to lead the mass. it's good for you to support her openly. I admire you for it.