I was listening to a regular Sunday morning recorded lecture series by the late author and Zen Buddhist, Alan Watts. He is on every Sunday at 7:00 AM. His talks always range over a variety of life issues that he then applies the philosophy of Buddhism.
We do not allow ourselves the notion that life is not serious.
Artists and art are the supreme luxury as we apply surplus money to support the arts and we call it fine arts. Implication is that the “completely useless person” makes paintings or art to put on some monied person’s utilitarian walls.
The irony is that the artist shows us the future and opens our eyes before it happens as distinctly different from a philosopher for example.
As a further example of how degraded our view or the artist is, a teacher or doctor or minister needs to be careful with their private lives. But artist can debauched, depraved and totally risqué as he doesn’t matter.
Role of the artist is that of the unimportant person in our society but through the artist we learn how to live. And this is all arts: written, visual or music. Above all music as the sounds of music is a gateway to consciousness. Concentration on a tone is the easiest way to stop thinking and to open yourself to the still point of infinite space, light and timelessness.
Sound stops your verbalizing. Sound enables you to access the version of the world as it is. You have to stop talking.
Watts went into a more detailed explanation about the sound of OM as well but his comments on art and artists were what interested me. In our society we put different levels of worth and value on different occupations. That value is driven by popularity, demand, power, and money.
However, there is intrinsic and extrinsic value. We choose the one that has the most worth us.
We do not allow ourselves the notion that life is not serious.
Artists and art are the supreme luxury as we apply surplus money to support the arts and we call it fine arts. Implication is that the “completely useless person” makes paintings or art to put on some monied person’s utilitarian walls.
The irony is that the artist shows us the future and opens our eyes before it happens as distinctly different from a philosopher for example.
As a further example of how degraded our view or the artist is, a teacher or doctor or minister needs to be careful with their private lives. But artist can debauched, depraved and totally risqué as he doesn’t matter.
Role of the artist is that of the unimportant person in our society but through the artist we learn how to live. And this is all arts: written, visual or music. Above all music as the sounds of music is a gateway to consciousness. Concentration on a tone is the easiest way to stop thinking and to open yourself to the still point of infinite space, light and timelessness.
Sound stops your verbalizing. Sound enables you to access the version of the world as it is. You have to stop talking.
Watts went into a more detailed explanation about the sound of OM as well but his comments on art and artists were what interested me. In our society we put different levels of worth and value on different occupations. That value is driven by popularity, demand, power, and money.
However, there is intrinsic and extrinsic value. We choose the one that has the most worth us.
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