[music playing] Dharma Bites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for your life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you and happy listening. We've seen that art is the organization of sensuous impressions that express the artist's sensibility with a high or low. And now for the second half of the definition, and communicate to his audience a sense of values that can transform their lives. Not much, very much could be said on art as communication, but this had better wait for the time being. It's not directly concerned with our main subject, our main topic. I want to deal with the concluding part of the definition that you just say with a sense of values that can transform our lives. Now what does one mean by this? We've seen that the artist experiences a higher level of awareness than ordinary people. And out of this higher level of awareness, this higher insight, this higher experience, this more comprehensive, this more powerful experience, he expresses in the form of the work of art. Not only expresses, but communicates. And this means, this word communicates means that when we enjoy the work of art, we experience, for the time being, even though in a lesser degree, the state of consciousness in which the artist produced it. This is what we mean by communication. He expresses, he expresses in the work of art. We enjoy the work of art, and we to experience what he experienced when he produced that work. Temporally, at least, we are raised to his level. Temporally, we become, as it were, artist, new man, share his sense of values, his insight, his experience. And this transforms our lives. Transformation is evolution. It's not a change of place, but a change of level. So we see that the artist is not only himself more highly evolved, but through works of art, in which he expresses, through which he communicates to other people, his own experience, himself. He contributes to the higher evolution of other people, of the human race. The enjoyment of great works of art, we may say, enlarges our own consciousness. When we listen to a great piece of music, or when we say a great painting, read a great poem, we experience it. We really allow it to soak into us. We go beyond our ordinary consciousness, beyond our normal consciousness, we become bigger, we become greater. A whole life is modified, a whole experience, we may say, is transformed. On this gradually, if we persisted interests of this sort, this gradually affects the whole of our being. And eventually, as I've said, even our lives may be transformed. Now, this is very much the case, we may say, at the present time, especially in the West. This sort of recourse to art, great works of art, where the paintings, or the musical compositions, or works of literature. Because in the West, traditional religion, conventional religion, that is a Christianity, has lost its hold. As someone once remarked, we're already living in the post-Christian age. In the monuments of Christianity, some of them very great and very glorious are still all around us, but they're dead, and they're empty. They're only shells. Orthodox, traditional religion, for the vast majority of people, for the unchurched, is no longer a means of grace. We don't get anything from it. It means nothing to us. It doesn't uplift us, doesn't move us, doesn't transform us. Much less still transfigur us anymore. Maybe ages ago, maybe hundreds of years ago, maybe in the last century, but not now. It's done with, it's finished. It's often completely irrelevant. People aren't even against it anymore. So what has happened? The place of religion has been taken by art. For many people, the place of religion has been taken by art. And this was the point, by the way, of the title of my little work, which I quoted from, The Religion of Art. The place of religion, the function of religion, has been taken over by art by the fine arts. And this is one of the reasons, I think, for the immense popularity today, of all the fine arts. We sometimes grumble, and we complain of the decay of culture and all that sort of thing. But actually, we find there has been a great improvement. Formerly, the enjoyment of works of art was the privilege of a few. Five hundred years ago, if you lived in this country, you'd be living in a miserable hovel probably, of Watland's door. And you wouldn't have seen any pictures or paintings, except maybe one or two in the church. You wouldn't have heard much music. You certainly wouldn't have read very much, if anything at all. These things, in geometry of culture, in geometry of works of art, these were the privilege of the few, of the wealthy, of the noble, of the high and mighty in the world. But nowadays, we find that all the artistic heritage of the ages, even, is within the reach of practically all people. If you think in the past, if you think in terms of the great classical musicians of the past of the 18th century, how many people heard their works performed in their own day? While Mozart was alive, how many people heard his symphonies and so on? Maybe a few tens of thousands. At the very, very most, sometimes only hundreds of people heard them. But now, over the air, through the radio, we find, these same works are being enjoyed again and again and again, by tens and even hundreds of millions of people throughout the world. So, one finds a great dissemination of culture going on at present, which we shouldn't overlook. And these great works of art made more and more available to more and more people with the result, that they're exerting a slow and steady influence and gradually refining and raising the level of consciousness and awareness, practically, we may say, if not of the whole population, of a very considerable and influential section of it. And in this way, are contributing to the whole process of the higher evolution, contributing through these cultural, through these artistic channels, through the production of the new man. And this is why art needs. This is why all the arts need to be encouraged. This is why they form their constitute an integral part, not of religion in the narrow sense, but of the spiritual life. As I hope, I've been able to show this evening to an act. And this is why, in our own movement, in our own group, the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order, we have, as one of our sort of subsidiaries, an arts group. And this is why there have been poetry readings and even sometimes musical performances and so on. Because all the arts, the finance, are really an integral part of the spiritual life and the higher evolution. It might, by the way, be appropriate just at this point to let you into a little secret. And this is that we're planning to conclude this whole series of lectures with a special poetry reading. Here, on Friday, are the 12th of December. That is to say, the Friday after the last Friday lecture. That is to say, the ninth from the beginning. And full details will be given a little later on. We hope you enjoyed today's Dharma Light. Please help us keep this screen. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donnie. And thank you. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]
