Abstract
Wu Chen’s paintings of bamboo almost seem to move. There is a magic here. Can there be a special empathy in the creating, that somehow evokes the life force? A catalog proclaims, “Twenty portraits of the artist as a bamboo.” Is there a deep beauty, not only in nature, or in its underlying truth, but anywhere, that can call us more deeply, bridging beyond difference, and bringing new awarenesses? Beyond that is the sublime, as per Kant, characterized as fully beyond human (rational) understanding. One meets wonder and awe and intimation of more, of power beyond our reckoning, and infinities yet awaiting. Can appreciation of nature and marvels of life bring awe and humility while calling us forward to learn in new ways?
You do not need to leave your room ….
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait,
be quite still and solitary. The world will freely
offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice.
It will roll in ecstacy at your feet.
Franz Kafka
There is pleasure in the pathless woods
Lord Byron
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- 1.
Loori, Zen of Creativity.
- 2.
Character studies by Russell Mehlman, from www.bwac.org.
- 3.
Rao, Consciousness Studies: Cross-Cultural Perspectives. See also Baruss and Mossbridge, Transcendent Mind.
- 4.
Rao, Consciousness Studies: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, 214.
- 5.
Pope, Chinese Art Treasures, 152.
- 6.
Buber, I and Thou.
- 7.
Cassettari, Chinese Brush Painting Techniques, 7.
- 8.
Richards, “A New Aesthetic”; Richards, “Twelve Potential Benefits of Living More Creatively,” 301.
- 9.
Ross, World of Zen, 91.
- 10.
Richards, “Relational Creativity and Healing Potential,” 301.
- 11.
Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teachings.
- 12.
Norris and Epstein, “An Experiential Thinking Style.”
- 13.
Jung, Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious.
- 14.
Richards, “Will the Real Scientists Please Stand Up?: Taboo Topics, Creative Risk, and Paradigm Shift.”
- 15.
Baruss, Alterations of Consciousness. Also see Wise, The High Performance Mind.
- 16.
James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 298.
- 17.
Puhakka, “An Invitation to Authentic Knowing,” 9.
- 18.
Baruss and Woodbridge, Transcendent Mind.
- 19.
Ibid., 27.
- 20.
Ibid., 107.
- 21.
Baruss, Alterations of Consciousness, 217.
- 22.
Gilder, The Age of Entanglement, 3.
- 23.
Ibid., 252.
- 24.
Dossey, “How Healing Happens,” 15.
- 25.
Santayana, The Sense of Beauty, 31.
- 26.
May, My Quest for Beauty, 20.
- 27.
Richards, “A New Aesthetic for Environmental Awareness: Chaos Theory, The Beauty of Nature, and Our Broader Humanistic Identity.”
- 28.
Ibid., 61.
- 29.
Prum, Evolution of Beauty. Not at all the female as ornament for the male (known in species including ours).
- 30.
Blijlevens et al., “The Aesthetic Pleasure in Design Scale.” This immediate asthetic pleasure, for its own sake, and across cultures, was demonstrated in a visual design context, although transfer to other senses was suggested.
- 31.
Smith, Smith, and Tinio, “Time Spent Viewing Art and Reading Labels.”
- 32.
Tinio, “From Artistic Creation to Aesthetic Reception: The Mirror Model of Art.”
- 33.
Richards, “When Illness Yields Creativity,” 489; also Richards, “New Aesthetic,” 64.
- 34.
Nahon and Hemsley, “Going Viral.”
- 35.
Burns, “Sketch—New Year’s Day: To Mrs. Dunlop.”
- 36.
Combs and Krippner, “Structures of Consciousness and Creativity.”
- 37.
Combs and Krippner, p. 143.
- 38.
Combs, “Radiance of Being: Understanding the Grand Integral Vision.”
- 39.
Smith, Smith, and Tinio, “Time Spent Viewing Art.”
- 40.
Combs, Consciousness Explained Better, 62; Perceptions also join the “informational palette” for future use, Richards, “A New Aesthetic,” 64.
- 41.
Combs and Krippner, “Structures of Consciousness.”
- 42.
Kellert and Wilson, editors, Biophilia.
- 43.
Roszak, Gomes, and Kanner, editors, Ecopsychology.
- 44.
Green Guerillas, www.GreenGuerillas.org; from 1973. Today over 600 greater New York City community gardens exist, a nonprofit resource center, and programs to reclaim urban land, stabilize city blocks, and to help people and communities work together.
- 45.
Kellert and Wilson, editors, Biophilia.
- 46.
Richards, “New aesthetic,” 70.
- 47.
http://www.human-memory.net/brain_neurons.html. The human brain has about 100 billion neurons. Estimates of memory capacity vary widely from one to 1000 terabytes; data from the 19 million volumes in the Library of Congress represents about 10 terabytes!
- 48.
Richards, “New Aesthetic,” 71.
- 49.
Ibid.
- 50.
Ibid., 70, and see Bateson, Form, Substance, and Difference: Steps to an Ecology of Mind.
- 51.
Ibid.
- 52.
Ibid., 71. See also Zausner, “Trembling and Transcendence.”
- 53.
Ibid.
- 54.
Ibid.
- 55.
Ken Wilber compared humans in our usual realms to ants on the pavement, roaming in the dimensions we know, believing this is the totality, while unaware that there is vastly more to the cosmos than we have ever imagined.
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Richards, R. (2018). Beauty, the Sublime, the Hidden. In: Everyday Creativity and the Healthy Mind. Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55766-7_15
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