On Being: Experience of: Beauty
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| On Being
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1. Beauty is the radiance of being.
2. The experience of beauty binds us more fiercely to life, thus enhancing our chances of survival. 3. Every moment of being is a moment of indescribable grace. 4. We perceive this grace, however, to a greater or lesser degree, depending on how much attention we pay to it. 5. Thus when we are anxious or preoccupied or grieving or in pain we see very little beauty in being. But when we turn our gaze, we are consumed by its glory. 6. The function of art is to turn our gaze towards beauty. 7. Dissonance and ugliness, tragedy and sorrow, bring us to the edge of paradise, where we may yearn even more for what is not there. 8. Being is uniformly radiant. Nothing is more or less beautiful except in our perception. 9. Should we shift our perception, then, we would see equal radiance in all things.
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