Art & Yoga are Life!

Recently my daughter had an assignment for English Literature. She had to compare and contrast two poems. “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by Keats and “Musée des Beaux Arts” by Auden.

Both poems are inspired by art! They inspect art, life and death. Keats poem ends with asserting that “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.” Auden’s poem ends with a ship which is witness to a tragic event, “a boy falling out of the sky. Had somewhere to go and sailed calmly on.” Keats sees the urn as unchangg

To me from the yoga perspective, Keats hints at timelessness within longing, heartbreak and all the human emotions. It reminds me of the sound Om with it’s 4 parts as described in a number of Upanishads. A - U - M - Silence. Om has 3 manifest sounds and one unmanifest sound…silence. Silence represents timeless, unchanging consciousness that also includes everything manifest. The silence is within the transformation from beginning, middle, end and beyond. Thus, beauty sits within all parts of the change and waits to be revealed.

On a surface level though, we could say that Keats acknowledges the challenges of life but suppresses them in favor of happiness like an artistic “spiritual bypassing.”

Auden seems to have an opinion based in realism or even fatalism. He is inspired by the painting “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. “ In that picture, Icarus is falling from the sky in the top Left corner to his death meanwhile there is a huge scene below of people going about their work, animals doing their thing, people swimming…life going on all while personal tragedy is striking someone. There is a nonchalant attitude to other people's struggles in the painting as well as in the poem.

(This is NOT the painting just an illistration of Icarus)

I notice this with peoples’ attitudes toward world events. We ignore what is not directly affecting us personally. Sometimes we think it must be exaggerated or that people just want to be negative. This can have a definite hardening affect. It eats away at compassion for others.

Many Eastern and Western philosophies and religions highlight the importance of compassion. I am teaching the Yoga Sutra for a yoga teacher training and this just came up. In the Yoga Sutra, karuṇā or compassion is described as a reaction to take toward those that are suffering. In that practice, it keeps your own mind serene.

Yoga Sutra 1.33

maitrī-karuṇā-muditā-upekṣāṇāṁ sukha-duḥkha-puṇya-apuṇya-viṣayāṇāṁ bhāvanātaś citta-prasādanam

By cultivating friendliness toward the happy, compassion for the suffering, delight in the virtuous, and indifference toward the unwholesome, the mind becomes undisturbed or serene.

In all schools of Buddhism, karuṇā is a crucial practice and way of being. They wish for all beings to be free from suffering.

The Bhagavad Gītā says to see all as yourself and have compassion.

BG 6.32

"He who sees equality everywhere, O Arjuna, through the likeness of his own self, whether in happiness or sorrow, is considered the highest yogi." - Lord Krishna

In Christianity, Jesus's actions reflect compassion for others. Compassion in action!

The poem by Auden as well as the art that inspired it, is affective at forcing you to confront how we care or don't care for others and highlights our darker callous nature while the poem by Keats looks at the light and the dark and sees beauty within it.

Is life beautiful or tragic or both? How can we navigate these questions on our path? What guidance does yoga have on these ways of being? Can these reminders be a call to action to share compassion and beauty in the world? Comment below!

Or let's go deep together. Study yoga philosophy with me! I have workshops coming up in the spring and I can also teach you or your group privately.

Lisa

Ode on a Grecian Urn

BY JOHN KEATS

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,

       Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

       A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape

       Of deities or mortals, or of both,

               In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

       What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

               What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

       Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,

       Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

       Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

               Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;

       She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

               For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed

         Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;

And, happy melodist, unwearied,

         For ever piping songs for ever new;

More happy love! more happy, happy love!

         For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,

                For ever panting, and for ever young;

All breathing human passion far above,

         That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,

                A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

         To what green altar, O mysterious priest,

Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,

         And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?

What little town by river or sea shore,

         Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

                Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?

And, little town, thy streets for evermore

         Will silent be; and not a soul to tell

                Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede

         Of marble men and maidens overwrought,

With forest branches and the trodden weed;

         Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought

As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!

         When old age shall this generation waste,

                Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,

         "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

                Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

Musée des Beaux Arts

By W. H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,

The Old Masters: how well they understood

Its human position; how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting

For the miraculous birth, there always must be

Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating

On a pond at the edge of the wood:

They never forgot

That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, 

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.