The Experience of Beauty

Before the silent meditation, I would like to say a few words about the experience of beauty in Sufism. Traditionally, Sufism has been characterised as the path of love, and on this path, the experience of love is very much intertwined with the experience of beauty. Beauty seeks love, and when it finds the right person, it strikes like a bolt of lightning and creates love.

There is a beautiful story about Ruzbehan, a Persian Sufi from the city of Shiraz in the 11th century, that makes the same point about the connection between beauty and love. Once, Ruzbehan was invited to give a sermon in Shiraz. During his sermon, he relayed that, while walking in the marketplace on his way to the mosque, he noticed a woman telling her daughter, “My dear, you must cover your face, and don’t show your beauty to anyone, because by reason of your loveliness and beauty, someone may fall into temptation.” When Ruzbehan heard this, he turned to the mother and said, “Although you forbid her to show her face, she will not listen to your words and accept your advice, because she is beautiful, and beauty has no rest until it finds love.”

In Sufism, the experience of beauty has both objective and subjective elements. The objective element is that the experience of beauty can be inspired by a person, or a kind or selfless act, or even an object like a poem or an event such as a piece of music. These things are objective in the sense that they exist or occur whether or not anyone is observing them. The subjective element of the experience of beauty relies on your perception and approach; you have to be in the right frame of mind to experience such things as beautiful. This means if you are preoccupied or agitated and in general not receptive, you won’t be open to the experience of beauty.

Now, within the subjective part of the experience of beauty, there are two components. The first component is that one must live in the present moment to experience beauty. This means that one has to be mindful of what is going on in one’s environment. If one is not present mentally, one won’t see the ‘beautiful’ act. It is as simple as that.

The second component of the subjective aspect of the experience of beauty is that one also has to be in the right spiritual frame of mind. It is helpful if one has had the influence of a culture or environment that promotes spiritual values. One has to be spiritually prepared to perceive spiritual acts as beautiful. Observing acts such as kindness and compassion should automatically invoke in us the experience of beauty. If the environment in which we grow up and/or live regards acts such as self-effacement or self-sacrifice as a sign of weakness—or worse, stupidity—and actively promotes their opposites, such as selfishness and self-centeredness, it can be a challenge to be in the right mindset and be prepared to observe an act such as kindness or generosity, for example, as beautiful.

In fact, people who enter a spiritual path—and in this context, Sufism—are, in effect, preparing themselves to be in the right frame of mind to experience beauty and, ultimately, love. This means that sometimes we have to act or go against the social norms of the society in which we live in order to be in the right frame of mind to experience spiritual beauty. Coming here twice a week and attending the meditation session is, in a way, to prepare yourself to be in the right state of mind in order to experience beauty and, ultimately, the experience of love.

Another way beauty can lead to love is in the context of the experience of physical beauty of a person or the physical attraction between two people. The interesting question to raise here is this: Can love between two people turn into spiritual or divine love instead of staying just in the physical realm? By spiritual or divine love, I mean a love which is more encompassing than love for one person or one’s relative. Such love should include all other beings in the world.

It seems that to experience physical beauty in another person, we don’t need to be in the right frame of mind. The process seems to be automatic and out of one’s control, possibly because our biology is at work here, and we don’t have much say about whom we find attractive and beautiful. But to go beyond physical beauty and physical love and have the experience of divine love, we do need to be in the right frame of mind. We need to be already searching for spiritual truth or divine love when we fall in love with a person. Without having a spiritual framework or already searching for the divine, the experience of beauty and love will stay at the physical or personal level. 

Perhaps another story about Ruzbehan will illustrate this point:

During his pilgrimage to Mecca, Ruzbehan was afflicted with love for a woman singer. He fell ecstatically in love with her, and he cried much before God in his state of ecstasy. He paced the rooftop terraces, begging God to help him with his affliction, as he realized his relationship with God was transferred to the woman singer. Of course, no one knew of it, and he worried that people would imagine that his ecstasy was for God. So, finally, he went to the Sufis and took off his cloak, throwing it before them. He told his story to the people, saying, “I do not want to lie about my spiritual state; God has made me love the woman singer instead.” He then became devoted to the woman, like a servant. Eventually, through the help of the woman and God’s grace, he could continue to love her while at the same time transcending her love to arrive at divine love—an all-encompassing, unconditional love of everything.

Ruzbehan could make the transition from temporal love to divine love because he was already searching for divine love. It is hard to imagine that he would have been elevated to experience divine love if he had not already lived in an environment with profound spiritual values which made him search deeply for the divine. 

In our contemporary society, the focus is on consumerism, materialism, and tribalism, and there is not much emphasis on spiritual values as the goal of life and the reason for living. Therefore, it is very rare that one’s experience of physical beauty and love results in spiritual love, since very few individuals who fall in love with each other have already been looking for a spiritual truth.

It is fitting to end this talk by citing two lines from Hafez, whose poetry mainly relates to his experience of beauty and love.

In pre-eternity the ray of your beauty manifested,
          And love appeared and set fire to the whole world.
From the day Hafez wrote your love’s book of joy,
          He gave up tranquillity and peace that he once had.