China

(Sri Aurobindo:) “The imperative instinct for beauty and the aesthetic demand which set that among the first needs and was not satisfied with anything else if this were neglected or put second in importance, are now things that are almost lost, nowhere general to the human mind, but once they were the sign of the poetic and artistic peoples and the great ages of art and poetry and supreme creation. The ancient communities who created those fine many-sided cultures which still remain the fountain-head of all our evolving civilisation, had the instinct for beauty, the aesthetic turn of the temperament and formation of the mind almost, it would seem, from the beginning, planted in their spirit and their blood, colouring their outlook so that even before they got the developed intellectual consciousness of it, they created instinctively in the spirit and form of beauty and that is quite half the secret of the compelling and attractive power of the antique cultures. … Japan and China, more especially perhaps southern China, for the north has been weighted by a tendency to a more external and formal idea of measure and harmony, had in a different way [than India] this fusion of the spiritual and aesthetic mind and it is a distinguishing stamp of their art and culture.”

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See also

• Taoism

External links

• Two talks by Loretta to Chinese visitors - Talk 1 (Feb 2020, 1:28:13)
• Two talks by Loretta to Chinese visitors - Talk 2 (Feb 2020, 1:16:00)