To accompany the release of his book Lumière, published by Éditions Allary, Matthieu Ricard is offering a series of blogs on photography. An invitation to share wonder, celebrate the beauty of the world, and continue the quest for light that has guided him throughout his sixty-year journey.
In The Quantum and the Lotus, a dialogue between the astrophysicist Trinh Xuan Thuan and myself, we devoted a chapter to the relationship between beauty and truth. A scientific theory or a mathematical equation is “beautiful,” Thuan told me, “when it has a sense of inevitability and necessity, and when, once formulated, it imposes itself as self-evident. Faced with a beautiful theory, a physicist will say: ‘It is so beautiful that it must be true. Why didn’t I see it before?’”
Thus, Einstein’s theory of relativity—widely regarded by physicists as the most beautiful theory and the most harmonious intellectual structure ever conceived by the scientific mind—is beautiful like a Bach fugue, in which one cannot change a single note without causing the entire harmony to collapse, or perfect like the smile of the Mona Lisa, whose balance would be destroyed by altering even the slightest detail.
The beauty of a scientific theory also lies in its simplicity. Ultimately, what is most essential to a beautiful theory is its truth, its final criterion of validity being its conformity with Nature and its ability to reveal connections that were previously unsuspected.
Beauty can also be understood as the harmony between parts and the whole. In Buddhist art, there exists a precise iconography defining the ideal proportions of a representation of the Buddha. A grid is used to place with exactness the curve of the eyes, the oval of the face, and the different parts of the body. These features correspond to perfect harmony and are the outward reflection of the inner harmony of Awakening.
From the superficial to the essential, beauty therefore varies according to how each person conceives aesthetic pleasure. One might also say that love and altruism are beautiful, while hatred or jealousy are ugly. Observe how the former can illuminate a face, and how the latter can disfigure it. True beauty thus reflects an alignment with the deepest nature of the human being. The more we are in harmony with our fundamental nature, the more we discover the inner beauty present within each of us. Ultimate beauty is perfect accord with Buddha nature—supreme knowledge, Awakening.
You can find this entire photographic project in Lumière, published by Éditions Allary.
Matthieu Ricard donates all of his income—royalties from his books, photographs, and lectures—to development projects run by the Karuna-Shechen association, which works to reduce poverty and empower the most vulnerable women, men, and children. In this way, every reader becomes a direct contributor to solidarity through their purchase.