The beauty of totality ~ Chögyam Trungpa

Ultimate goodness is connected with the notion of ultimate joy without comparison to suffering. Out of that joy, we begin to experience, visually, the beauty of the blue sky; the beauty of a red rose; the beauty of a white chrysanthemum; the beauty of chattering brooks; the beauty of the openness of the ocean, where sky and land meet; the beauty of sweet and sour; the beauty of music, high pitches and low; the beauty of experiencing warmth on our bodies; the beauty of cool air, which creates natural refreshment; the beauty of eating a meal when we feel hungry; the beauty of drinking water when we feel thirsty; the beauty of learning more things when we feel that we are not learned enough—when we feel that we don’t know enough wisdom or vocabulary or language.

I don’t want to paint a pleasure-oriented picture alone. There is also the beauty of your schoolmaster pinching you on the cheek; the beauty of being too hot on a mid-summer’s day; the beauty of being too cold in the middle of winter—the beauty of pain as well as the beauty of pleasure. All of those are connected with the fundamental notion of basic goodness. You might ask why we speak of beauty. The answer is that beauty here means fullness, totality — total experience. Our life is completely full even though we might be completely bored. Boredom creates aloneness and sadness, which are also beautiful. Beauty in this sense is the total experience of things as they are. It is very realistic. It means that we can’t cheat ourselves — or anybody else, for that matter.


Chögyam Trungpa

from the book Ocean of Dharma: The Everyday Wisdom of Chogyam Trungpa

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