Beauty

Yesterday I saw in the news pictures of the inside of the restored cathedral of Notre Dame and they were so beautiful that I could feel tears welling up. I remembered a couple of years ago being in Paris outside the hording around Notre Dame and being similarly moved. For me it is the symbiotic relationship of the beauty of that created, which through our visual sense we perceive and the beauty of our humanity in doing this work which is moving. It has been a couple of weeks in which I have found my own relationship with the construction industry brought into focus. I marvel at the strides the industry has made in terms of tolerance and inclusivity, of the sophistication of the procurement and design practices now common place and the squaring of circles. I despair at the same old problems mostly caused by lack of investment, impossible budgets and timescales. I see myself having grown out of the harsher social environments of the industry as now somewhat of a dinosaur and yet also still fuelled by the same irrepressible determination to be as authentic as possible. I found myself listening to Jimmy Somerville and the energy of overcoming repression shone through the music and I was also moved by this and remembered the struggles. Recent posts here chart and indicate my questioning of the Buddha dharma and circulate about the nature of our being and any kind of liberation from suffering. When I consider the above beauties and struggles, the awareness to be experienced through meditation, through sex, through engaging with work, family and friends, with my partner DC who always has the capacity to illuminate, through music and the works of others I regain a sense of the fragility of our condition as beauty. It is in this field that I remember that there are those who realised Satori and I wonder, what do I wonder? What am I to make of this strange falling through life with its dialectic, its reaching out for boughs to hold, to remember that the sound of a stone striking bamboo or anything for that matter might in the ripe mind trigger the falling away... Does that really matter? That's an awfully big question. The divine isn't anywhere but this very moment in this very place but the depth of this is, to borrow a phrase an 'elusive obvious'.