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Enlightened Beauty: Towards a Buddhist Aesthetics
Lee D. Clarke
Abstract
In a globalizing world, increasing the understanding between diverse traditions of thought via comparative philosophy is paramount. Whereas comparing Asian, especially Buddhist, and Western philosophies is gaining popularity, aesthetics is an area of philosophy that lags. This is because many question whether there can be a Buddhist aesthetics given the suspicion of Buddhism towards beauty as something that leads to suffering. If a version of Buddhist aesthetics were to be found that was compatible with Western philosophy, it would allow Buddhism to make valid contributions to wider debates and help build bridges among different ways of thinking. This paper argues that not only does Buddhism have the space for a positive aesthetical view of the beautiful but that its aesthetic view, based on a reinterpretation of enlightenment, or nirvāṇa, is compatible with Western views of the beautiful while still retaining a uniquely Buddhist perspective.
Key Words
aesthetics; art; beauty; Buddhism
1. Introduction
In our increasingly globalizing world, comparative philosophy—and in comparing, attempting to advance understanding between diverse traditions—is increasingly important. In so doing, we are not only contributing to a more harmonious world but also giving nonWestern traditions of thought a degree of recognition that in many cases is long overdue. One form of comparison that is gaining popularity is that among the philosophical and religious traditions of Asia and the West. Within that, Buddhist philosophy has become prominent given its popularity in Europe, North America, and Oceania as a religion and spiritual tradition. Works on Buddhist metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and more abound. Despite increasing interest in the field of comparative aesthetics by scholars such as Yuriko Saito and Kathleen Higgins, a purely and solely Buddhist aesthetics is one branch of philosophy that has lagged in this regard.
This delay is not due to lack of interest or lack of expertise on the subject. Instead, it is due to a lack of agreement on whether or not there is anything to write about at all. While there is an enormous interest in aesthetic aspects of Buddhism such as its architecture, sculpture, literature, and the like, the idea of ‘Buddhist aesthetics,’ in the more specific sense of a defined Buddhist philosophical appreciation and study of art and taste from within the Buddhist tradition, is itself contentious. This is mainly due to the fact that Buddhism traditionally exhibits a marked distrust towards the sensual, the beautiful, and the like. In Buddhist thought, indulging in the appreciation of beauty for beauty’s sake can only ever lead to craving (tṛ́ṣṇā) and therefore to suffering. It should therefore be avoided.[1]
There have indeed been attempts at reconciling the two, and while many of them indeed work well from a Buddhist perspective, they fail at establishing a basis for a theory of aesthetics that is comparable with that of Western traditions, whether in the more exalted, ancient, metaphysical Platonic sense or the more modern, terrestrial study of art in more Kantian terms of ontology and notions of taste. While Buddhism is under no obligation to do so to prove its worth, if such a theory were successfully proposed, it would not only assist in understanding between these two geographical areas of the world in aesthetic terms but also allow Buddhism to contribute to wider debates on the place of aesthetics in contemporary life.
This paper argues that not only does Buddhism have more than enough conceptual space for a positive evaluation of the beautiful but also suggests that a suitable foundation for a Buddhist aesthetics comparable with those of the West can be found via a reinterpretation of the Buddhist goal of nirvāṇa—as a permanent and stable experience of the beautiful that allows the manifestation of truth.
The discussion will begin with a survey of current attitudes towards Buddhist aesthetics before making the case that Buddhism, and individual Buddhists, have indeed recognized the concept of beauty. It will then go over some of the attempts at bridging the gap between Buddhism and beauty that have already been made by recent scholarship and admit that they do indeed work, again from within Buddhist parameters, but will argue that a new attempt is needed that will be more acceptable to Western thought in order to elicit a genuine dialogue. The theory of an aesthetic interpretation of nirvāṇa will then be argued before finally suggesting what such a theory, if true, could have meant for the way that pre-modern Buddhists viewed art.
Some general knowledge of Buddhism is assumed by the author, but explanation will be given where necessary.[2] The Buddhism the article focuses on will chiefly be that of the Indo-Tibetan tradition, though what is said can easily be applied to other forms. Finally, this paper does not plan by any means to be the final word on the subject of Buddhist aesthetics but instead intends to lay a foundation in the hopes that the topic and discussion it entails will be continued by other scholars in the field.
2. General survey
When one surveys recent publications on the idea of a Buddhist aesthetics, the overwhelming perception communicated is that the search for such a thing is fruitless. Various scholars who are experts in the field have opined that aesthetics is one field of Western philosophy where Buddhist thought does not have a direct equivalent as it does for others such as epistemology and ethics; wherein there are differences, but one can still feel as if one is standing upon somewhat familiar ground. Speaking of Buddhist attitudes to art, Richard Gombrich writes, “I would not call this aesthetics, since for me, aesthetics’ is concerned with beauty; I would call it a view of art or an attitude to art: that it serves to communicate the Buddha’s message.”[3]
Such a view is further supported by later scholarship. David E. Cooper, for instance, writes that in Buddhism, “The predominant attitude to the beauty of things in the classical texts is one of suspicion and sometimes hostility.” Cooper gives a few Buddhist textual justifications for such a stance. According to Buddhism, he says, physical beauty causes craving, calling one thing beautiful and another ugly is at odds with the Buddhist obligation to see things not as we see them but as they really are, and appreciating natural beauty distracts us from seeing the suffering present within the world.[4] Finally, José Ignacio Cabezón writes that the attempt to reconcile Buddhism and beauty “is never an easy or straightforward thing, for Buddhist aesthetics must always contend with the fact that when beauty is contemplated, desire and craving always loom large on the horizon.”[5]
Indeed, a study of the texts only serves to prove their point. We can see this especially if we compare how the body, for instance, is described aesthetically in classical Western philosophy with how it is described in Buddhist texts. Take Plato in the Symposium:
A lover who goes about this matter correctly must begin in his youth to devote himself to beautiful bodies. First, if the leader leads aright, he should love one body and begat beautiful ideas there; then he should realize that the beauty of any one body is brother to the beauty of other and that if he is to pursue the beauty of form, he’d be very foolish not to think that the beauty of all bodies is one and the same. When he grasps this, he must become a lover of all beautiful bodies, and he must think that this wild gaping after just one body is a small thing and despise it.[6]
We can see, then, that from the beginnings of Western philosophy, bodily beauty and the beautiful in general were not only acknowledged but celebrated and were assumed to derive from a divine source. Compare these two descriptions with one from the Buddhist Vijaya Sutta:
And when it is lying dead, bloated and discolored. Cast off in a charnel ground, the relatives are unconcerned with it. Dogs then devour it as do jackals, wolves and worms. Crows and vultures devour it, and whatever other beings there are…One who, because of such a body would think to exalt himself or who would disparage others – what is this due to but lack of vision?[7]
The most obvious interpretation of this passage is to encourage Buddhists not to become overly attached to the body and end up indulging in craving (tṛ́ṣṇā) for its beauty to be permanent, thus leading to suffering and continued rebirth.[8] Even so, we can still see that it is almost the complete opposite to Greco-Roman appreciation. Not only is the body described with words designed to make one feel repulsed; there also is not a single note of appreciation as to a body’s beauty. To add to this, the Greek world famously exalted and showed off beautiful bodies, practicing naked in the gymnasiums and Olympic games, for example; the Buddhist text, meanwhile, criticizes he “who would exalt himself” based on his body!
Is the search for a Buddhist aesthetics thus doomed to failure? I think not. Even if there is a very real dismissal and distrust of beauty within the Buddhist textual tradition, there are still instances of a more benign view throughout the religion. Such a view even extends to the Buddha himself. John Powers points out that in Indian Buddhist literature, the Buddha is viewed as “the paragon of masculinity, the ultimate man,” and his “beautiful body” and “the effect he has on women who see him” are frequently mentioned.[9] In his Buddhacharita, Aśvaghoṣa describes women who look at the preenlightened Buddha as “smitten by his beauty.”[10]
Discussion of beauty goes beyond descriptions of the Buddha, however. In the Bhayabherava Sutta of the Majjhima Nikāya of the Pali Cannon, the Buddha himself talks about his experiences meditating in the forest in terms that evoke a definite aesthetic appreciation:
I am purified in bodily conduct. I resort to remote jungle-thicket resting places in the forest as one of the noble ones with bodily conduct purified. Seeing in myself this purity of bodily conduct, I found great solace in dwelling in the forest.[11]
Here, the Buddha says that he enjoyed and found solace in retreating to remote forests to meditate, hardly the attitude of someone who possesses a dislike of beauty—in this case, that of the natural world. Indeed, the natural and calm environment is seen as assisting on the spiritual path. Such a view also is echoed in the collections of early Buddhist poems known as the Theragatha and the Therigatha (Verses of the Elder Monks and Nuns, respectively, c.the third century B.C.E). One monk, Vanavaccha, writes the following:
Jagged cliffs,
Blue like the passing clouds
Clear lakes and icy creeks,
Their rock-strewn slopes colored with indagopakas.
Small crimson mites that emerge after rain,
How I adore them.[12]
The monk, Usabha relates a similar sentiment:
Towering clouds,
Sweep the ridge.
The trees grow thick,
Ah, excellent!
For Usabha
Who has a taste for solitude and forests.[13]
Again, these poems demonstrate that Early Indian Buddhism was not universally and completely hostile to all forms of beauty without exception. These monks evidently display a form of aesthetic appreciation for the natural beauty that surrounded them and acknowledged it as such. William Dalrymple and Anita Anand write how Buddhist literature is “pervaded with gemological imagery: gem doctrines, jewel bodies, diamond sutras and heavenly kingdoms and islands made up of jewels and precious stones.” This is the case, they say, despite Buddhism’s “austere embrace of poverty and ascetism.’’[14] Such a persistent use of imagery and metaphors involving diamonds, especially to describe important religious doctrines and transcendent locations, suggests that even Buddhists could not help but recognize the beauty and seemingly otherworldly nature of such objects.
Even the bodily beauty of others was not completely off limits. A poem attributed to the Buddhist philosopher Dharmakīrti (c. 600 – c. 660 C.E) relates his falling in love with a woman and describing her beauty:
Had the creator once seen her, he would never have let her go,
this gazelle-eyed beauty
with face as golden as saffron paste.
Again, had he closed his eyes he could never have made such features.
From which we see
that the Buddhist doctrine is best:
that all is uncreated.[15]
As we can see, Dharmakīrti describes the woman’s beauty as so intense that it refutes the existence of God himself. Whether Dharmakīrti was the actual writer or not, the poem was evidently written by a Buddhist. It demonstrates that even important and dedicated Buddhist philosophers such as he were not completely blind to ordinary human beauty and do not see its appreciation as completely at odds with their religious vows, even in this case, using the former to advance the latter. Lastly, the beauty of Buddhist art itself in the form of visual images, music, and literature, as Cabezón acknowledges, “seem to imply, at the very least, a tacit acknowledgement that there is room for beauty.”[16]
It is such positive views of beauty and the beautiful by Buddhists themselves and by scholars of Buddhism that provide a reason not to give up on the idea of a Buddhist aesthetics. There have been and continue to be a number of attempts to reconcile Buddhism and the beautiful that are not by any means failures but have still not led to a widespread acceptance of the notion of Buddhist aesthetics within Western academia. Unfortunately, this is the case, even if they succeed from a Buddhist perspective. A quick survey will demonstrate why.
3. Attempts at reconciliation
Given the above, we can say that there can be (and have been) a worthwhile attempt to demonstrate the existence of a Buddhist aesthetics and prove that the term itself is not an oxymoron. It is true that when beauty is referred to within Buddhist texts, it is mostly cautionary and Buddhists are warned not to become overly attached to the notion. The average unenlightened person, Buddhist adherent or not, does not yet possess the discipline to contemplate the beautiful without it serving as a tool to perpetuate suffering and thus continued rebirth. However, does this mean that there is a level of spiritual discipline that can be attained when it is possible to contemplate the beautiful without these negative consequences? It is upon such an idea that Cabezón bases a (Mahāyāna Madhyamaka) theory of Buddhist aesthetics:
In the aftermath of an understanding of emptiness, there is sufficient affective distance from the object, now seen as an illusion, to allow for a proper (that is desire-free) appreciation of its beauty. Anything short of perceiving emptiness leads to an overestimation of things, and therefore to desire. Only when the mind is free from reification and conceptualization – only when attachment and clinging have no perch – can the beauty of an object be appreciated and perhaps even enjoyed.[17]
In short, Cabezón says that a proper understanding of the doctrine of śūnyatā (emptiness), the idea that the beautiful (along with everything else) is fundamentally empty of independent existence or own-being (svabhāva) and only exists in a state of ontological dependence upon everything else, allows for its aesthetic appreciation. At this level, the Buddhist practitioner will have understood that as everything is impermanent and empty of inherent existence, everything can be viewed without the want for it to be anything other than it is.
Far from offering a criticism to Cabezón’s view, I in fact would say that I am in full agreement with it. From a Buddhist philosophical perspective it is successful in demonstrating that an appreciation of beauty is possible and should be encouraged. The one issue with it is: It is only successful from that perspective. It would most likely not be viewed as such from a Western one, and as we want to show that Buddhist aesthetics has something to worthy to contribute to world philosophy, this presents an issue that needs to be solved. The fundamental issue from a Western perspective is that the Buddhist is only able to appreciate the beautiful after having realized its illusory nature. From a Western perspective, beauty is very much a real, existent concept. To refer to something as beautiful is to assign to it a real property, regardless of taste. From such a perspective, the Buddhist is not actually appreciating the beautiful at all because beauty, along with everything else, is denied as an existent thing.
Other Buddhist approaches run into the same problem. Staying with the Madhyamaka school, we could say that the beautiful could be appreciated within the framework of the two truths (dvasatya) doctrine. This doctrine proposes that although the ultimate truth (paramārtha) is that every existent thing at the level of its fundamental ontology is empty, there is a recognition that it would be impossible to navigate the ordinary world if nothing can be referred to as if it had independent existence. Given this, there is also the provisional or conventional truth (saṁvṛti) that allows a Buddhist to act as if things do have svabhāva while simultaneously keeping in mind that in fact they do not. Could one say that the beauty of a thing only exists at the level of conventional truth? After all, the term ‘truth’ is still indeed present and there is indeed at least a level of truth given to the conventional in order to positively use it at all.
All this being said, such a strategy arguably would fail in achieving our goal from Buddhist and Western perspectives. For the former, it is indeed the case that the conventional truth is regarded as being “true” in a certain way. Despite this, the fact remains that it is overshadowed by the ultimate truth of śūnyatā, which is placed above it in the conceptual schema. Thus, the fact that beauty is at its heart empty sits above the idea that we can refer to it as if it exists and therefore appreciate it. There is also the fact that, as Garfield and Thakchöe write, a second meaning of saṁvṛti is “concealing.” They continue: “In this sense, to say that something is conventionally true is to say that it masquerades as truth, concealing its true nature.”[18] Therefore any conventional appreciation of beauty from a Buddhist perspective would still simultaneously regard it as ultimately unreal and even as an active participant in obscuring what is real and true. This reason is also why this attempt would fail from a Western point of view—the reality of beauty is still denied.
Even if we approach from the other main Mahāyāna school, that of Yogācāra, the same issue persists. Famously, Yogācāra has as its main doctrine that of consciousness-only (vijñapti-mātra) or mind-only (citta-mātra). This is the idea that everything is fundamentally a mental representation or mental in nature. Unlike the rival Madhyamakas, the adherents of Yogācāra argued that there was something that had own-being or independent existence—that was mind. Would an aesthetic approach based on the Yogācāra doctrine of mind-only solve the problem in that it allows for something to be permanent? At first glance, the idea that all beauty is conditioned by mind may allow for some space to be given to the subjectivity of aesthetic taste; the fact that everyone applies the beautiful to different things can be explained by differences in individual minds. That is a positive. However, the fact remains that Yogācāra still denies the real nature of the beautiful. If it is just a mental representation, it is not out-there in the world to be appreciated and contemplated. Thus, while it can usefully account for subjectivity (provided the problem of other minds can be sufficiently solved), it still does not provide enough of a realist account of the beauty to be accommodated within or accepted by Western theories of aesthetics.
It seems then that we are at an impasse. Western aesthetics gives a level of reality, even if not always permanence, to the idea of beauty that Buddhism denies. Roger Scruton gives a Western definition of aesthetics that demonstrates this. He says, “we call something beautiful when we gain pleasure from contemplating it as an individual object, for its owns sake and in its presented form.”[19] With Buddhism, as we have seen, this is not possible to do in the same way. No pleasure can be gained from contemplating beauty that will not eventually lead to craving, suffering, and continued entrapment in the cycle of saṃsāra. Each object called beautiful, whether nature, the body, or art, is characterized in Buddhist thought as impermanent and so useless to contemplate. As we also have seen, Buddhism also cannot view something as beautiful in its presented form. This is because the presented form of either a beautiful object or the beautiful as a concept is normally as an independently existing permanent entity. Due to the anti-essentialism of Buddhist metaphysics, such a form can never be said to correspond with the true and the real. The presented form must be seen through to reveal its fundamental lack of intrinsic existence or its status as a mental projection. For Buddhism, beauty is a mask that must be seen through. Beauty does not reveal the true so much as obscure it. For Western forms of philosophy, again, the beautiful expects a level of reality and permanence that Buddhism is simply unable to provide without violating its own view of the world.
Must we say that all hope of reconciling Buddhist and Western aesthetic traditions is lost? Should we not just let each exist in its own sphere, not bothering the other with attempts at conceptual bridges? Even if this may be accepted by many, it would be a shame to have to do so. There may be yet one lifeline remaining for us. If we think about the bare basics of Buddhist practice and worldview, we know that it seeks to allow a person to escape the cycle of rebirth and the sense of existential dissatisfaction (duḥkha) that inevitably comes with it by dissolving the constant feelings of craving that demand for things to be a certain way when they are simply not that way. The worst form of such craving is our attachment to the idea of an eternal self that persists from moment to moment as the “me” through all bodily changes. Upon realization that such an idea is illusionary, along with ethical practice, one can be liberated from the cycle and attain nirvāṇa or enlightenment. Crucially, once one has attained nirvāṇa (become an arhat), such an achievement cannot be undone. To reiterate, although one may not experience the world in the same way as before, the state of nirvāṇa, once attained, is permanent and stable. Indeed, it is the only “thing” that has those characteristics at all. Could nirvāṇa serve as the basis for a more inclusive version of Buddhist aesthetics?
4. Nirvāṇa as the beautiful?
To begin, it is worth remembering what attaining nirvāṇa means. To achieve it means the end of the idea of possessing a permanent self, the end of rebirth in the cycle of saṃsāra, and therefore the end of duḥkha experienced within it. In short, to attain nirvāṇa is to discover or attain truth (satya). Traditionally, Buddhism has taught that one can experience duḥkha in many different ways, such as birth, illness, old age, death, craving for permanence, and more. Interestingly, another element of duḥkha, according to some scholars as well as the Buddha himself, is being separated from what is pleasant or pleasing. Roger R. Jackson describes the idea of suffering in Buddhism as follows:
The truth of suffering involves the claim that all saṃsāric existence is either implicitly or explicitly unsatisfactory. Birth, sickness, aging, dying, separation from the pleasant, encountering the unpleasant and not getting what one wants all entail suffering, either physical, mental or both.[20]
Le Huu Phuoc also describes “separating from the pleasant” as a characteristic of duḥkha,[21] and the Buddha himself in the Saṃyutta Nikāya, a key Theravādin text of the Pāḷi Cannon, has a very similar description:
Now, this, bhikkhus is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering, separation from what is pleasing is suffering, not to get what one wants is suffering; in brief the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering.[22]
We could interpret this separation in two ways. One: being separated from what is pleasing or pleasant causes suffering. Two: a characteristic of suffering within saṃsāra involves a separation from the pleasant. Both interpretations are not at odds with Buddhist thought, especially when we consider that since nirvāṇa is the opposite of saṃsāra, attaining the former would logically mean that one attains something that is either not separate from the pleasant or is pleasant. Furthermore, is it possible to interpret beauty or the beautiful in a Buddhist context as something pleasant? It seems so, for if it were not, we could not end up craving and then suffering for it, a crucial aspect of the Buddhist suspicion of beauty we encountered earlier.
Given the above, we could tentatively suggest that the attainment of nirvāṇa, as well as meaning the end of rebirth, and experiencing the true also involves at least a kind of inner aesthetic experience of the beautiful as part of it. In this view of things, saṃsāra could be viewed through an aesthetic lens as a kind of existential or cosmic ugliness that only allows us to view beauty as an assistant to our continued dissatisfaction, because we will crave for its permanent endurance and be unable to let it go. An aesthetic interpretation of enlightenment could also mean that we are able to see the beautiful as it really is (yathābhūta), meaning that since attaining nirvāṇa ensures that we no longer crave or suffer, we are able to experience such a view in its fullest and truest sense. As Cooper writes, Buddhist texts frequently describe “the affective dimension of ‘liberated’ experience of the world as beautiful.”[23] There is some textual evidence for both views in both Theravāda and Mahāyāna texts.
In the Theravādin Saṃyutta Nikāya,the Buddha describes the experience of nirvāṇa in very aesthetic and emotionally evocative terms including:
the truth…the unaging…the stable…the peaceful…the deathless…the sublime…the amazing…purity…[24]
In the Mahāyāna, the idea that Buddhas view reality as beautiful upon enlightenment is more pronounced. In the Vimalakirti Sutra, for example, the following exchange takes place. The Buddha’s disciple Sariputra cannot see the beauty of the world and Brama responds by saying:
Bodhisattvas who regard all living beings equally, whose minds are pure and deeply engrossed in the truth, and who follow the Buddhas’ wisdom, perceive this Buddha land as pure.
This implies that upon the mind becoming “pure” and following the Buddhist path, the Buddhaland (or the world) will also be perceived as “pure.” The exchange continues:
The Buddha then touched his toe to the earth and immediately the tricolioism was magnificently adorned with hundreds of thousands of precious treasures…
The Buddha then said to Sariputra, “Do you now perceive the splendid purity of this Buddhaland?”
Sariputra replied, “Yes I do, World Honoured One! I was unable to see or hear it before, but now the splendid purity of this Buddhaland is apparent.”
The Buddha said to Sariputra, “My Buddhaland is always pure like this, I only make it appear rife with evil and impurity for the sake of saving living beings of lowly aspirations.”[25]
In the last passage, the Buddha explicitly implies that at least in the Mahāyāna view, seeing the world as “impure” and “rife with evil,” or better put, not seeing things “as they truly are” is a part of the condition of being unenlightened. The fact that the world is depicted as being “adorned” with gems and other precious stones usually associated with beauty also suggests that the beautiful constitutes a part of what makes up the true condition of the world.[26] If this is the case, then we can propose a reasonable interpretation that becoming enlightened involves, along with the end of rebirth and suffering, some kind of aesthetic experience or ability (for want of better terms) along with it.
It is a common stance within the wider Buddhist tradition that becoming enlightened allows one to see the world in its suchness (tathatā) or as it really is (yathābhūta). Michael McGhee, describing the former, writes that the “thusness of things…is simply what appears when ignorance and delusion retreat as we overcome craving and aversion.”[27] In our interpretation, seeing things in their thusness upon enlightenment reveals their beauty and allows us to appreciate it in an acceptable manner. Cooper arguably supports such a stance in saying that a Buddhist conception of beauty “requires of the experience of beauty that this be a self-conscious experience of things as they are.”[28] Buddhism therefore does allow for an acceptable appreciation of a certain kind of enlightened beauty that acts as a means for the deliverance of truth. In short, as stated earlier, over-attachment to beauty can obscure truth, but the reverse does not follow: attainment of truth in the form of enlightenment serves to de-obscure beauty.
In viewing things in this manner Buddhism becomes in some ways surprisingly analogous to Platonism in a very specific way. The Platonic quest seeks to guide the soul from our lower sphere of impermanence to the world of permanent forms. According to Plato, speaking of the beautiful in the Symposium, “one goes always upwards for the sake of this beauty,” rising through the stages from appearance to reality—the permanent and divine form of beauty itself.[29] In a somewhat similar way, the Buddha seeks to guide the practitioner’s mind from the impermanent, false, ever-shifting world of suffering within saṃsāra to the permanence and stability of truth in the form of nirvāṇa and the final end of rebirth. If our interpretation of nirvāṇa as containing an aesthetic element is accepted, we could also see the Buddhist quest as guiding one’s consciousness from impermanent forms of beauty that only encourage suffering to a state of stability that as part of its nature allows the beautiful to be contemplated without attachment. Both systems embark on a metaphysical quest to go from the unstable to the stable, from the world of flux to a state or world of permanence.
Of course it goes without saying that there are very distinct and somewhat insurmountable differences between these two systems, and between how I’ve described Buddhist aesthetics and Western aesthetics. A brief prelude may also serve to clarify what I am specifically not saying. To begin with, the key Buddhist lack of belief in a permanent and lasting idea of the self (anātman) means that unlike Platonism there is no soul that exists to guide anywhere. At most, it could be said that the concepts of consciousness (vijñāna) or mental continuum (citta-saṃtāna) can act as imperfect substitutes. With the added Mahāyāna idea of śūnyatā (emptiness), nothing, including beauty, can exist as an independent substance. There can be no world of permeant Platonic forms in Buddhist thought that act as the “essential-ness” or archetype of each existent thing. A Buddhist therefore cannot be said to be seeking the beautiful itself by trying to attain nirvāṇa, because to conceive of beauty as a substance with its own self-being is next to impossible. In fact, to adhere to such an idea would only be perceived as encouraging the intensification and continuation of feelings of craving and suffering.
Related to this is that Platonic thought (and, it could be said, classical Western aesthetics, generally) retains an element of the divine. The form of beauty for Plato was itself divine, inextricably bound to the good or God. In his thought, it is impossible to have one without the other. As Werner Beierwaltes writes:
Love of the beautiful is a manifestation of the Good and the divine itself; or again, love of God is the essence of beauty, is the absolute cause of the beautiful as an idea or of an individual beautiful object.[30]
For Plato, it was the link between beauty and the divine that influenced the Abrahamic traditions. Much of the most beautiful architecture and painting was created as a means of worship and not solely for the fact that it was beautiful to gaze upon.[31] For Buddhism, though, this again cannot be the case, since Buddhism does not focus on the idea of God, and a God conceived in purely Abrahamic terms would, again, clash with its metaphysical outlook. Crucially, nirvāṇa is not viewed in Buddhism as a divine ultimate reality or as a way to unify with God in the same way as theistic religions would view such a state. Therefore, in Buddhism there must be a severance between the idea of beauty and God if our idea of aesthetic-nirvāṇa is to survive and keep intact Buddhist philosophical parameters. These differences may unintentionally communicate that the focus on nirvāṇa makes it impossible to bridge Western and Buddhist forms of aesthetics, but as we will see in the next section, this need not be the case.
5. Buddhist devotion and rasa theory
Now that our theory of aesthetic-nirvāṇa has been established, we can apply it to the question of Buddhist art. Given the Buddhist suspicion of beauty, it may be asked how (or why) the well-known tradition of Buddhist art exists at all. Such a question may be asked because Buddhist art, in whatever form, is often exceedingly beautiful. As Cabezón says above, the aesthetic pleasure derived from much Buddhist art seems “to imply, at the very least, a tacit acknowledgement that there is room for beauty.”[32] Some mandalas are designed to be destroyed with impermanence in mind, yet much ancient Buddhist art still exists today, mainly due to the durable materials of which it was made such as stone, stucco, and lime plaster—they were designed to last.[33]
Yet the issue remains: Why would adherents to a religious tradition that is explicitly suspicious of beauty and permanence go out of their way to create works of art that were not only made to look beautiful but to endure, and have done so? Our aesthetic-nirvāṇa may hold the answer.
Assuming our theory to be true, we can draw attention to the fact that much of what makes Buddhist art Buddhist is that it is connected in some way, either indirectly or directly, with the Buddha himself or other enlightened beings. Whether it’s the early aniconic forms which symbolize the Buddha with a tree, a stūpa, wheel, or throne or the later anthropomorphic depictions, all Buddhist art connects eventually with the Buddha and the state of enlightenment attained by him. As Kinnard writes of early Buddhist art:
…part of what these early so-called aniconic figures signify is that the wisdom that Sakyamuni attained, the panna that enabled him to see into the true nature of reality and become the Buddha.[34]
Aesthetic-nirvāṇa explains both the reason why much Buddhist art was clearly made to look beautiful and to endure over time. If attaining nirvāṇa brings with it a form of aesthetic experience or vision, then it is acceptable to create works of art that allude to, represent, or depict this state, or rather those who have attained it and things connected to them in beautiful and artistically pleasing forms. If such a state is permanent, it is also acceptable, even advisable, to create these pieces out of materials that will endure in order to demonstrate its permanence. Of course, said Buddhists knew that in accordance with the principal idea of impermanence (anitya), such artworks will eventually decay, but choosing such durable materials made them as close to permanent as was possible, at least in terms of representation.
Not only do we find in such a concept a justification for Buddhist aesthetics comparable with the West but from it we can also speculate how such a view was actually experienced in practice. For this, we can briefly examine the main idea of Indian aesthetics, that of rasa. Derived from Bharata’s famous Nāṭyaśāstra, the concept of rasa describes an aesthetic experience where, fleetingly, the separation between the viewer as subject and the art as object disappears, resulting in a brief unification. As Priyadarshi Patnaik explains:
…finally, a specific emotion (say that of joy, ecstasy or disgust), intensifies to a state where we – for a few seconds or minutes – forget ourselves, submerge in the world of the art object and experience an emotion that has nothing to do with our lives. This experience makes us forget our identities, our specific time and locale, our histories, and floods us with a nameless experience. Bharata calls this experience rasa.[35]
Given its centrality to Indian aesthetics, it is not out of the question that Indian Buddhists would have been familiar with it, especially as in rasa the self is momentarily dissolved, making it suited to Buddhist philosophy.
To demonstrate how aesthetic-nirvana and rasa apply to Buddhist art, the very present religious element that surrounds the discussion, creation, and experience of figural art in South Asia needs to be remembered. Given the differences in context, it is important to clarify before the main discussion that we cannot assume that our modern Western views of what art is can be applied wholeheartedly to Ancient South Asia. Indeed, the opposite appears to be the case. As DeCaroli writes:
’Art’ now typically references visual displays intended to be viewed in acts of leisure or contemplation…Rarely were images figural images in South Asia understood as being so passive…From the very outset of the figural tradition, images in all South Asian contexts were attributed with a remarkable degree of power, agency and authority. Any notion that these objects were static or ordinary fails to grasp their significance…such images were always understood to possess the potential to affect the world around them.[36]
Cabezón similarly writes that Buddhist art was normally created not simply as art but as an offering. In many cases these objects were meant not (or not only) for the enjoyment of a human public but as offerings, for example, to the Three Jewels.[37] Gregory Schopen has found that many Indian Buddhists believed that the Buddha was still present in some form after his death at pilgrimage sites or somehow living through the presence of his relics.[38] In Buddhist monasteries, the Buddha’s image was viewed as a resident and even in some cases could legally own property.[39] From this, we can see that Buddhist art was conceptualized very differently to many of our modern conceptions, and to many pre-modern Buddhists, but not all, such art often could be a window to the presence of or to some form of contact with the Buddha himself and his awakened state.[40]
We can summarize by proposing that, for many Buddhists, aesthetics and viewing the beautiful were a fundamentally religious act. That all Buddhist art connects with enlightenment, combined with the idea that the Buddha was somehow still present and available in certain contexts to many Buddhists, suggests that art was created and hence looked upon as a means of worship. In circumambulating (parikrama) a stūpa, praying at a sacred site, or mediating upon a beautifully crafted image of the Buddha in the midst of his enlightenment through a rasa experience, the idea of self would momentarily dissipate. Indeed, DeCaroli writes that the emotional reaction experienced by and produced within a worshipper by the contemplation of a Buddha image is “not unlike the aesthetic theory of rasa.”[41] Such an experience allows a person to insert themselves into the Buddha’s presence, connect with him, but also, however briefly, to catch a small glimpse of what it was to attain the same liberation that he had. As Kinnard sums up: “On a more important level…images make the Buddha available, and in particular, they make available the prajñā that is the essential element, the paramount perfection, in attaining enlightenment.”[42]
Peter Skilling also summarizes what such an experience may have been like:
Recitation lifts the adherent out of the quotidian and evokes aesthetic and imagined worlds. Individuals establish a personal relationship with the Buddha through devotional practice; the Buddha is present in his relics and in his representations in the shape of footprints, painted scrolls, stūpa, relief carvings, or stuccos and images in the round. These are the supports of receptacles for offerings and inspiration.[43]
As stated above, some may say that no similar concept to nirvāṇa has played a significant role in Western forms of aesthetics and therefore a gulf rather than a bridge is formed. If we take a broader comparative view, we can say that the similarity lies in the fact that, in addition to its permanence and stability, both Western and Buddhist forms of aesthetics view beauty as pointing towards or being a revelation or experience of what each regard as the transcendent. We have seen that for many Western traditions from Plato onwards, beauty has always been viewed as that which takes one out of oneself (Kenosis), which can be compared to divinity. Although not equal to God, the state of nirvāṇa, personified to an extent in the Buddha himself as the supreme representation of liberation, as “human-become-Dhamma,” as Harvey writes, is the closest Buddhists can get to seeing the divine: that which goes beyond the human.[44] Thus, even though the idea of God must be severed from beauty in a Buddhist context, the notion of the divine does not necessarily have to be. The similarities, therefore, lie not entirely in the concepts of beauty themselves but in what is gained by aesthetic appreciation within the respective conceptual boundaries of each.
Following from this, a Buddhist appreciation of beauty is not only justified by the aesthetic impulse and permanent liberation of nirvāṇa but, because once gained such an appreciation allows the truth of that state to be facilitated by and become manifest within, the beautiful itself. What Byung-Chul Han writes could summarize how Buddhist aesthetics operates: “the work is not beautiful as a product but as the shining through of truth.”[45] While there still remain many differences between Buddhist aesthetics as described here and those of the West, in both cases the idea of aesthetic appreciation is based on an idea of the beautiful that, no matter if experienced in the external manner of Plato’s form of the beauty inhabiting an object or the interior religious ecstasy of Buddhist liberation, is a glimpse of truth made manifest that points the way to a yet higher goal.
6. Conclusion
In this paper I hope to have successfully shown that Buddhism does possess a tradition of aesthetic appreciation and a view of the beautiful that is just as worthy of study as Western philosophical aesthetics. Although there remain indisputable differences between the two traditions, the interpretation of the goal of the Buddhist path, enlightenment or nirvāṇa, that I have termed ‘aesthetic-nirvāṇa’ can provide at least a foundation on which a more common understanding can be built, sustained, and advanced by the work and insights of others. In both cases, aesthetics and a love of the beautiful is based on the twin ideas of permanence and truth. Although they are conceived in distinct ways and for distinct reasons, this key similarity remains. Our globalizing world obligates us to attempt an understanding of the other as much as possible. Aesthetics and philosophy in general are not immune from this objective, and through this paper I hope to have contributed in my own way to such a shared understanding.
Lee D. Clarke
leeclarke115@hotmail.co.uk
Lee D. Clarke is a philosopher based in the United Kingdom who specializes in Comparative Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion and the History of Ideas. His research primarily focuses on comparing ideas from Asian and Western traditions of thought and Indian Buddhist Philosophy.
Acknowledgement
I wish to thank the reviewer of this paper and the editor of this journal who both took the time to offer reasonable and helpful suggestions to improve this paper. Their efforts and words of kindness and encouragement were greatly appreciated.
Published on …
Cite this paper: Lee D. Clarke, “Enlightened Beauty: Towards a Buddhist Aesthetics,” Contemporary Aesthetics, Volume 24 (2026), accessed date.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.62729/6a6e6ad357206
Endnotes
[1] Since I write from a mainly Mahāyāna perspective, this article uses the Sanskrit versions of Buddhist terms.
[2] For those who wish to acquaint themselves with Buddhism, very good introductions include A Concise History of Buddhism by Andrew Skilton (Windhorse Publications Ltd, 2001) and An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History and Practices (Second Edition) by Peter Harvey (Cambridge University Press, 2013). Alternatively, I have written a paper comparing Buddhism and Stoicism that explains the Buddhist worldview and beliefs for nonspecialists. See Lee Clarke, “The Stoicism of Śāntideva: Comparisons between Stoic and Buddhist Philosophy,” Theoria, no 4 (2024): 377-399. https://philpapers.org/rec/CLATSO-54.
[3] Richard Gombrich, “Buddhist Aesthetics?” Journal for the Oxford Centre of Buddhist Studies, no. 5 (2013): 136-160. https://jocbs.org/index.php/jocbs/article/view/66.
[4] David E. Cooper, “Buddhism, Beauty and Virtue,” in Artistic Visions and the Promise of Beauty: Cross-Cultural Perspectives: 16 (Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, 16), eds. Kathleen M. Higgins, Shakti Maira, and Sonia Sikka (Springer, 2017), 126.
[5] José Ignacio Cabezón, Sexuality in Classical South Asian Buddhism (Wisdom Publications, 2017), 269-270.
[6] Plato, Symposium, trans. Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff, in Plato: The Complete Works, eds, John M. Cooper and D.S Hutchinson (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc, 1997), 492.
[7] The Buddha, The Suttanipata: An Ancient Collection of the Buddha’s Discourses together with its commentaries, trans. Bhikkhu Bodhi (Wisdom Publications, 2017), 188-189.
[8] This is not the only interpretation that could be given, however. Such passages could also be seen as attempting to retrain the Buddhist to stop becoming attached to beautiful bodies in order to use the body for more useful and virtuous spiritual purposes rather than rejecting them entirely. See Susanne Mrozik, Virtuous Bodies: The Physical Dimension of Morality in Buddhist Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2007), 108-113, and Ian James Kidd, “Beautiful Bodhisattvas: The Aesthetics of Spiritual Exemplarity,” Contemporary Buddhism, no 18, Vol 2 (2017): 331-345. https://philpapers.org/rec/JAMBBT-2.
[9] John Powers, A Bull of a Man: Images of Masculinity, Sex and the Body in Indian Buddhism (Harvard University Press, 2009), 1.
[10] Aśvaghoṣa, Life of the Buddha, trans. Patrick Olivelle (New York University Press, 2009), 89.
[11] The Buddha, The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikāya, trans. Bhikku Nanamoli and Bhikkhu Bodhi (Wisdom Publications, 1995/2015), 103.
[12] ‘The Sons and Daughters of Buddha,’ Songs of the Sons and Daughters of Buddha: Enlightenment Poems from the Theragatha and Therigatha, trans, Andrew Schelling and Anne Waldman (Shambala Publications, Inc, 1996/2020), 4.
[13] Ibid., 47.
[14] William Dalrymple and Anita Anand, Koh I Noor: The History of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond (Bloomsbury, 2017), 26.
[15] ‘Dharmakirti,’ Sanskrit Poetry: From Vidyakara’s “Treasury,” trans, Daniel H.H. Ingalls (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000), 135.
[16] Cabezón, Sexuality, 270.
[17] Cabezón, Sexuality, 273.
[18] Jay L. Garfield and Sonam Thakchoe, By the Light of the Moon: Candrakirti’s Prasangika Madhyamaka (Oxford University Press, 2025), 26.
[19] Roger Scruton, Beauty: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2011), 22.
[20] Roger R. Jackson, Is Enlightenment Possible? Dharmakirti and rGyal tshab rje on Knowledge, Rebirth, No-Self and Liberation (Snow Lion Publications, 1993), 65-66.
[21] Le Huu Phuoc, Buddhist Architecture (Grafikol, 2010), 16.
[22] The Buddha, The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Saṃyutta Nikāya, trans. Bhikkhu Bodhi (Wisdom Publications, 2000), 1844.
[23] David E. Cooper, “Beauty and the Cosmos,” The Harvard Review of Philosophy Vol XIX (2013): 106-117. https://www.pdcnet.org/8525737F00588A37/file/2C9E5780C823BF0AC1257E830060C76A/$FILE/harvardreview_2013_0019_0000_0106_0117.pdf.
[24] Connected Discourses, 1378.
[25]The Buddha, The Vimalakirti Sutra, trans, International Institute for the Translation of Buddhist Texts Dharma Realm Buddhist University (Buddhist Text Translation Society, 2011), 16.
[26] Of course, this does not mean that enlightenment will make the world appear beautiful in every aspect. Seeing the world “as it is” will also involve its “ugly” aspects, just as the Buddha is depicted as seeing beings suffering in hell after his awakening (see Majjhima Nikāya 4, with full citation information in Note 11), but the truly beautiful also becomes available.
[27] Michael McGhee, Transformations of Mind: Philosophy as Spiritual Practice (Cambridge University Press, 2000), 217.
[28] Cooper, “Beauty and the Cosmos,” 115.
[29] Plato, Symposium, 493.
[30] Werner Beierwaltes, “The Love of Beauty and the Love of God,” in Classical Mediterranean Spirituality: Egyptian, Greek, Roman. ed. A.H Armstrong (SCM Press Ltd, 1986), 293.
[31] For more on theological aesthetics in the Christian tradition, see David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (W.B Eerdmans, 2003).
[32] Cabezón, Sexuality, 270.
[33] Shashank Shekhar Sinha, Casting the Buddha: A Monumental History of Buddhism in India (Macmillan, 2024), 71.
[34] Jacob N. Kinnard, Imaging Wisdom: Seeing and Knowing in the Art of Indian Buddhism (Routledge, 1999), 84.
[35] Priyadarshi Patnaik, “Rasa Aesthetics Goes Global: Relevance and Legitimacy,” in The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art. ed. Arindam Chakrabarti (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), 44.
[36] Robert DeCaroli, Image Problems: The Origin and Development of the Buddha’s Image in Early South Asia (University of Seattle Press, 2015), 8.
[37] Cabezón, Sexuality, 270.
[38] Gregory Schopen, Bones, Stones and Buddhist Monks: Collected Papers on the Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Texts of Monastic Buddhism in India (University of Hawaii Press, 1997), 134-135.
[39] Ibid., 258-289.
[40] There was great controversy in India surrounding the issue of images and whether or not the Buddha was present in them. Many denied it, wanting to maintain the absence of the Buddha in nirvāṇa, going to the extent of modifying images’ eyes to deny any notion of contact. Others, though, were perfectly content with these ideas. The position expressed in this paper does not claim to represent all Buddhists, then, but a great number nonetheless. See Robert DeCarolli, “Avoiding Eye-Contact: The Negative Aspects of Sight in Early South Asian Buddhism” in Buddhism and the Senses: A Guide to the Good and Bad. ed. Robert DeCaroli and Donald S. Lopez Jr. ( Wisdom Publications, 2024), 19-41.
[41] DeCaroli. Image Problems, 136.
[42] Kinnard, Imaging Wisdom, 99.
[43] Peter Skilling, “Stūpas, Footprints and Imagination in Early Buddhism,” in Tree and Serpent: Early Buddhist Art in India, ed, John Guy (Yale University Press, 2023), 77.
[44] Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhism, 29.
[45] Byung-Chul Han, Saving Beauty, trans, Daniel Steuer (Polity Press, 2018), 79-80.