The Sublime in Art and Spirituality

[Dharmavidya]

Simon Morley writes: "Hello. My goal is to import buddhist ideas into mainstream discussions of contemporary art, but also to import some of these mainstream ideas about contemporary art into buddhist thinking. For instance, I'm currently editing a Reader on contemporary art and the sublime. What does buddhism have to say about this concept?" and I would add: what does the aesthetic idea of the sublime have to offer to the elucidation of spirituality.

Personally I think these are wonderful questions and I look forward to some good discussion.

[Ratnacitta]

Hi there.........I am a classical violinist and am SO fortunate to be surrounded by expressions of the sublime in what I do as a living......lucky me, I suppose!!..............
...... only that its tough playing professionally - the pressure to 'deliver' is always there, so my experience of the sublime can often be accompanied by the surprisingly mundane, in the form of stress, pressure of audience expectation and so on !!
I don't have anything particularly interesting to say other than that the composers vision I am immersed in so much of the time never ceases to astonish me in its depth and profundity......I don't know where to begin.............
Listen for yourselves......go on You Tube and search for Debussy's "La Mer" (Lucene Festival Orchestra perf).........how
can anyone really put into words that level of expressive genius, and how deeply it can affect a listener......
Aren't we lucky ??!!!
Best wishes,
Fiddler on the Roof

[Dharmavidya]

Thank you for this. Yes, one problem is that not everything can be expressed in words - thank goodness - so the arts are often much concerned with other dimensions. The sense of awe that you describe is perhaps an important hallmark of what we mean by the sublime and is a factor that is in common to the arts and spirituality and some other dimensions of life. I have two grandchildren on the way and the whole process of reproduction is certainly something awe inspiring. This also makes me think that there is both something universal and something that is very specifically located about the sublime - knowing about a child being born is not at all the same as being present and knowing about Debussy is not at all the same as performing his music. Art is always concrete even though it evokes universal meaning.

[Mat Osmond]

Hi,
I'm recently arrived, and just getting the hang of the forum here. I wanted to suggest to Simon a book called "The Unkown Craftsman : A Japanese Insight into Beauty, by Soetsu Yanagi", for a very interesting discussion of the role of beauty in relation to art and the human spirit.
WH Auden also gives a nice succinct explanation of the aesthetic and sublime sense in "The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays". (Very roughly: the sublime = the sacred = "a passion of awe" = a level of emotion that is receptive/passive and deeply personal. Not something one would dream of arguing over, as one might argue over aesthetic judgements - these being less personal, and belonging to a discriminating/active level of emotion and thought. He links the sublime and the aesthetic to Coleridge's idea of a primary and secondary imagination.)

Looking forward to learning more both about this community and this subject, Mat

[Simon Morley]

Greetings. Thanks for all your comments and observations. On Dharmavidya's invitation I'm going to post over the next few weeks a series of 'Talks' on the subject of the sublime and contemporary art. I hope they will get a discussion going. Basically, what I'll be doing is taking extracts from my forthcoming Reader and making some comments directed towards the specific context of this forum. The first Talk is attached below, and is in way of a general introduction intended to clarify just what we mean when we use the word sublime - no easy task as it seems to mean several rather different things........

[Mat Osmond]

Excellent- thanks. I look forward to reading them.

Not sure if I'm muddling sub-threads here, but I have been thinking about the poet Mary Oliver in relation to the question of other-power in art. Of opening to the other through art, and the role of craft, skill, intellect, knwoledge etc.in serving that process. She has been a very important figure for me for some years now. Some thoughts of hers below by way of example, although her work itself would make the best example I suppose:

"Poems must, of course, be written in emotional freedom. Moreover, poems are not language but the content of language. And yet, how can the content be separated from the poem’s fluid and breathing body? A poem that is composed without the sweet and correct formalities of language, which is what sets it apart from the dailiness of ordinary writing, is doomed.
Poetry is a life-cherishing force. And it requires a vision – a faith, to use an old-fashioned term. Yes, indeed. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry. Yes, indeed."

Mary Oliver - A Poetry Handbook

[Katrien Sercu]

First of all, i really appreciate this new departure with a consultant artist 'in residence'. I hope it can open and deepen some subjects on a new way. So i try to join, with the experience i have in art. The subject of the sublime touches me deeply: in life, in art, in spirituality, nature, between people.. in all. In playing violin (some years ago) and in dancing (both not professional, but good enough to become able to express the essence of an emotion, a movement, two notes..), the most important thing is to get free from tension and effort in body, speech and mind to become open to what wants to be expressed, by means of notes, words, colours, movements... We have to action, without a wished action. How is it possible that one note or interval can open a whole world, that intense silence between two notes evoke such an intensity? It opens us...a bit or totally...so we become susceptible for...yes for what? Lack of words or not possible to express in words? As musicien, dancer, poet, painter...all being for the use of..and by the grace of... Can we speak of Art without the sublime? What touches me so much in art is the mutual interaction between little and Big, between human and divine, between concrete and existential. We need art as we need spirituality to feel connected in the Whole on a wholesome way. Beauty as essence..as expression of the sublime.
I can not express what i want to say...deep feeling, without words.
I read your talk Simon and i'll see what it brings. Thank you!

[Mat Osmond]

I have read through Simon's talk once, and found the discussion both clearly laid out helpful - thankyou. I definately want to read it again and answer more fully. My first response is that it made me aware of a certain agenda that I bring, at least in relation to art.
The relationship of beauty to the sublime, and of each to the sacred, is an issue around which I seem to find myself out of kilter which much contemporary art. Simon's essay mentions the point at which the distinction arose between beauty and the sublime - when beauty came to be identifed with a less real level of our being, than that alluded to by the word sublime.
I find myself set into in a sort of stubborn - sullen, even - resistance to much recent and contemporary visual art, which seems still to be based on this assumption. ie That serious art is not primarily concerned with being beautiful. Often my experience of current art is that I am being invited to simply think about something, rather than to be directly 'touched' in the way Katrien puts so well above.
So I realise that I equate beauty with being touched, and feel that it is, in this respect, of the very essence of art to beautiful - to touch us. The sublime, surely, is about nothing if not being touched? Is it possible that we may look back as a culture and see the recent period of visual art as a time when the nature and purpose of beauty became obscured?
As I said, I post this in the spirit of a freely confessed agenda, around which there is no little confusion.
Mat

[Katrien Sercu]

Thank you Simon for your talk 1: it is sublime. For me it is not a content to go in discussion: what could i add to? It is interesting to see this historical evolution and change in what can be the core of the sublime, also that it can have a dark side.
What i notice is : by 'studying' the sublime, the deep feeling disappears.
I wait a little and i'll see if i can join again. I wish you a good way in it!

[Armida]

To me the sublime cannot be captured. It just is...the self-perfected state beyond any materially-generated expression.
The sublime may be experienced relatively, but never absolutely for any period of time....it is fleeting. We conceptually experience the sublime through the senses, and that is not enough.

As artists, we can meagerly hint at portraying sympathetic joy, at equanimity, at loving-kindness, and at compassion, hoping the viewer senses what we sensed. As advanced practitioners, we would have no need to portray them--these four sublime states. We would simply dwell in the sublime, for in the words of Khenchen Tsutrim Gyamto Rinpoche--

Paint it no more /
True reflection /
Let it float /
In the true light of space.

.
On sublime love: Love, without desire to possess, knowing well that in the ultimate sense there is no possession and no possessor: this is the highest love./i>

On compassion: Compassion that is strength and gives strength: this is highest compassion.
And what is the highest manifestation of compassion? To show to the world the path leading to the end of suffering, the path pointed out, trodden and realized to perfection by Him, the Exalted One, the Buddha

On sympathetic joy: Sympathetic joy means a sublime nobility of heart and intellect which knows, understands and is ready to help.

On equanimity: Equanimity is a perfect, unshakable balance of mind, rooted in insight. Looking at the world around us, and looking into our own heart, we see clearly how difficult it is to attain and maintain balance of mind.

[Armida]

But we can try just the same.

[Mat Osmond]

Hello again Simon (and all),

Having read your talk again, I notice two rather separate internal conversations arising from reading it - one pertaining to spiritual practice and in particular Pureland teaching (at least as I have grasped it thus far ), and the other concerning how this concept relates to the current zeitgeist in contemporary Fine Art. While the latter is in a way is the dominant response, I am aware I may be somewhat overcrowding the discussion here, and am a bit hesitant to run with that second line of thought.
So sticking to Pureland practice for the moment, what stayed with me most was the idea of the sublime as ‘a negative experience of limits’. I have been very struck by the Pureland understanding of our bombu nature, and what seems to be a language of enlightenment that starts at the opposite end of the stick to that which I am more accustomed to. ie A view of spiritual practice as a movement towards understanding the confused and partial nature of our experience of reality...’just as we are’. Of the real encountered as other, the important word being encountered – as opposed, for instance, to it being revealed as our ‘essence’, our underlying nature, etc. I wonder if you can say more about how the concept of the sublime relates to this aspect of the Pureland path?
I was unclear about the idea of technology and the operating systems of modern life being a more likely ‘contemporary sublime’. What I do connect it with more easily is the overwhelming vastness of the Darwinian understanding of our nature, or just of nature. Caroline Brazier touches on this very movingly I thought in her chapter ‘Nembutsu in a Grieving World’ (in The Other Buddhism), where she reflects on James Lovelock’s understanding of Gaia , and the natural world as wholly ‘other’ (to our fears, hopes and fantasies about it). Maybe a confrontation with climate change (coupled with the collapse in both global fuel and food supplies) will be our age’s defining ‘contemporary sublime’?
One more personal reply: I was reminded, reading you talk, of a nasty encounter with altitude sickness in 1987. Seven days’ walk towards the ‘beautiful’ Himalayas climaxed in a cerebral edema atop whatever peak it was, and an experience of utter, desolate flatness before this ‘wonderful spectacle’. On the long return walk I could hardly bear to look back at the mountains, now seen for what they really were: a bleakly cruel, frozen and horrible environment. As I descended back below the freeze line and heard once more trickling water, felt air as thick and rich and soup, all of that was now delightful. I know altitude sickness is well known for the havoc it can play on one’s emotions, and am not sure if any of that has much to do with the sublime, but it came strongly to mind.
Anyway, lots more one could say, but I’d leave it there for now.

Many thanks,
Mat

[Dharmavidya]

Thank you Mat. I have added a piece called Sublime Love on the Love and Its Disappointment group that may throw some light on your first para.

I like your offering of the grieving world as an enlightening other. I think that Simon's portrayal of the machine as another modern significant other is also very good. Jacob Moreno, the inventor of psychodrama, said that he was stimulated to create his method by his fear that modern people were becoming machines.

Thank you for sharing your experience in the mountains - it does sound like an experience of the sublime, not in the up-lifting, but in the chastening mode. Perhaps we can actually see the sublime generally in these two modes, either of which can enlighten.