On The Importance of Art
Wiser men than I have attempted to define art. Perhaps some have felt that they succeeded, but I have never seen a definition of what is and what is not art that was widely accepted, and I shall not attempt to create one here. Instead, I will share my somewhat Buddhist perspective on how some art can be very beneficial to those who are exposed to it. In order to do that, I need to explain a little bit about Buddhist psychology.
The Buddha is believed to have taught some 2500 years ago that the causes of suffering are craving, aversion, and ignorance. One might understand craving as the feeling that something must be or happen, and aversion as the feeling that something must not be or must not happen. The ignorance he spoke of was specifically ignorance of what causes suffering and how happiness can be achieved. All of the Buddha's teachings are about understanding and eliminating the causes of suffering in order to achieve true happiness.
Many Buddhist practices are about cultivating qualities and mind states that are helpful in this quest. For example, metta meditation is practiced to cultivate a state of loving kindness. Vipassana meditation is practiced to help people see through their mental models and interpretations to the reality of their existence, and to help them develop equanimity with respect to the truths they discover.
noun.
- Proficiency, facility, or dexterity that is acquired or developed through training or experience.
Practice is a good word here. We don't tend to think of love or compassion as skills, but they are, and the more that we practice them, the more easily they come to us in the future. What's more, they are skills that lead to a happier life.
The Buddha taught, and modern day psychologists agree, that most of our responses to the circumstances and happenings of our lives are in a sense pre-programmed. You have probably met people who seem remarkably undisturbed by the difficulties they encounter, and others who are easily upset by what seem to be very minor problems. This is a manifestation of each person's internal programming.
This programming is not a static thing. The subconscious mind is always watching the way that we respond to things, and adjusting our programming to follow the example we set. Each time we respond to something with love, or fear, or greed, or kindness, we are programming our minds to respond the same way in the future. By practicing beneficial mind states we train our minds to more often respond in that way. You may respond to hundreds of stimuli each day, and every one of those responses contributes to the person you are becoming, one day at a time.
So if we can choose how we respond to things, we can choose who we become. But it is not easy to choose our responses to things. If it were, Buddhists would not need to meditate, they would simply choose to be kind and compassionate!
But meditation is not the only tool we can use to change our responses to the influences in our lives. We can also make wise choices about what influences we expose ourselves to. To give a personal example, I don't like the way that I respond to violent television, so I choose not to watch it. I believe that over the long term, the television I watch will affect who I become, and so I make my viewing choices with that in mind.
But at least as important as what you choose not to have in your life, is what you choose to bring into your life. That's where art comes in.
The art that is displayed in my home, both art that I created and art by other artists, was chosen because of the way that my wife and I respond to it. Great art can invoke many positive mind states in a viewer. Each time I look at a photograph or a sculpture, or watch a good play or movie, or listen to certain music, it connects me to my emotions. The art I choose to have in my life helps me to feel a sense of wonder, or reminds me of something of some perspective broader than what I otherwise have, or fills me with a sense of appreciation. And every time that happens, my mind is learning to achieve those beneficial states of mind, and my capacity for love, for wonder, for compassion, increases.
One very wise meditation teacher has said that if you don't choose the way that your mind is programmed, there are plenty of other people that are willing to do it for you. One cannot turn on a radio or television, read a newspaper, or drive down a city street without being exposed to a multitude of messages and images carefully crafted by experts to teach us that happiness comes from being thinner, having different hair, or owning more expensive things. And although we've never seen anybody gain more than momentary pleasure from buying more things, because of sheer repetition we come to believe these messages.
A friend of mine once looked at Yellow Flowers and Stones and immediately thought "Yuck! There are flies on the flowers!" She had a very negative response to the flies, and for a moment or two she was made unhappy by that. Perhaps she feels that unhappiness every time she sees flies on something.
But flies are nether good nor bad, they just are. And in the case of the flowers, they are good news! The flies are there because the flowers have produced a sweet nectar. The flowers produce the nectar for the purpose of attracting insects who, as they feed, also carry pollen from flower to flower, fertilizing them and helping to create the seeds for next year's flowers. So when I look at this photograph, it reminds me that everything has its place.
One might look at this tree and dismiss it as a broken, imperfect speciment and some people do just that. But I find trees like this to be quite inspirational. Many years ago the main trunk of this tree was broken, perhaps by heavy ice or strong winds. What a devastating loss this must have been! From one day to the next, a strong, vital tree became a broken, crippled one. If this happened to me I might spend a long time lost in misery, asking myself why did this happen to me?
But trees are much wiser than this. The very next day this tree began to work with its new reality, putting energy into side branches. It did not become what it would have expected to become, if trees had expectations. But it became something else equally or perhaps even more beautiful. Every time I see this tree, or this photograph, I think about the difficulties in my own life and how I am responding to them, and I adopt a more positive, beneficial attitude.
I'll give just one more example, though I could give many, Antelope Canyon 1.
This one is a bit more subtle. I can't tell you exactly what the message of this photograph is for me. but I do know that when I take a moment to really consider it, it opens me up s0mehow, and I find that valuable.
Have a look at some of these. Take a moment to really consider them. How do they make you feel?
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It may be that other people appreciate art for other reasons, but for me, this is what makes art so important.
Frank Reiter, 2006.
