Beauty as a direct experience

Ah, the beauty of what is.

A serene lake, a beautiful photograph.

This is the recognition of the nondual.

Or is it?

Recognizing beauty is a direct experience of nonduality — I read this somewhere.

But if you say beauty, you create the duality of ugliness in the same breath.

Once concept creates its opposite.

And is the recognition of ugliness not nondual?

We hear the concept “beauty” and a whole truckload of conditioning is instantly activated. This is beautiful, that is not. I like this, I don’t like that. This would look better if … That has these 3 flaws …

We just can’t leave reality alone — it has to be judged.

But BEAUTY (capitalized to point to what is absolute), is yet another way to say infinite, eternal, aware PRESENCE.

Beyond the self’s conditioned judgment, what is, is BEAUTY.

Ugliness is BEAUTY too.

When we experience the BEAUTY in the ugly, the flawed, the not-good-enough — then we are before or beyond the conditioned filter of self.

And in that sense, it is a direct recognition of the nondual.