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October 29, 2007
art is religion, religion art
In India art is religion, religion art. They are strictly utilitarian. The purpose is to inform and transform. Inform us of the way things truly are, transform us into what we might truly be.
India never had a notion, until our century, of art for art’s sake. Art was a spiritual technology. And it is really very miraculous how art makes easy what otherwise would be difficult. Now what is otherwise difficult, and the answer is, to behave decently to one another. Sometimes that’s easy but not always or the world wouldn’t be the shape it’s is in. But art, when it’s great art and really working, what it does is to transport us, lift us to a different state of consciousness from which the world looks very different, and from that different way in which the world looks we find spontaneously we want to behave decently.
Huston Smith
Posted by amin at October 29, 2007 10:08 PM