Finding the Sublime

 Rajasthan, India

For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts.
T.S. Eliot

Yamdrok Tso Lake, Lhasa, Tibet

What are the scenes of nature that elevate the mind
and produce the sublime sensation?
…the hoary mountain, the solitary lake,
the aged forest and torrent falling over rocks.
– Hugh Blair, lecture notes from 1783.

Dal Lake, Srinagar, Kashmir

Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless,
so that the mind in the presence of the sublime,
attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the
failure but pleasure in contemplating the
immensity of the attempt.
- Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason

 Myanmar/Burma

Myanmar/Burma

Bayon, Angkor Wat, Cambodia

Lives of great people all remind us, we can make our lives sublime,
and, departing, leave behind us, footprints on the sands of time.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Japan

Preah Khan Temple, Angkor Wat, Camboida

Inle Lake, Myanmar/Burma

Chiang Mai, Thailand

Agra, India

Kathmandu, Nepal

Rajasthan, India

Thrissur Pooram, Kerala, India

Weligama, Sri Lanka

Brazil

Greatly begin.
Though thou have time, but for a line, be that sublime.
Not failure, but low aim is crime.
-James Russell Lowell

Gujarat, India

Afghanistan

Road to Sarobi, Afghanistan

Maimana, Afghanistan

Tibet

 Cambodia

Rajasthan, India

Four sublime states of mind  taught by the Buddha:
 Loving-kindness
Compassion
Sympathetic Joy
Equanimity

Sri Lanka

Taj Mahal, Agra, India
Built with translucent white marble and inlaid with gems from China, Tibet, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, and the Arabian peninsula

The Taj Mahal in Agra, India, and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain,
are two of the world’s most iconic buildings.
They both evoke passionate emotions, even love, despite being
on opposite ends of the historical and architectural spectrum.

Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain
Constructed with a steel frame covered with titanium sheathing

In both buildings shape, size, scale, proportion, texture, color,
and light work together to sublime effect.

Basel, Switzerland

 

To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.
- William Wordsworth