Mindless destruction?

[jake-the-peg]

If you watched an episode of Antiques roadshow where, after a steep valuation was placed on a piece of ancient china, the owner deliberately smashed it, and said it was because he'd become too attached to material objects would you think it vandalism?

He could have sold it and donated the money to charity after all.

I watched a program where a group of Tibetan monks spent weeks creating a beautiful intricate mandala of coloured sand. Hours every day 'painting' this onto a board with a stylus a few grains at a time.

When they'd finished they disposed of the central points in running water and carefully swept the rest up and disposed of it.

An exercise in not becoming attached to something due to it's beauty or value.

Is this something we should all do from time to time or is it an utter waste to distroy something of beauty and value?

[jno]

I suppose the pleasure for them was in creating the beauty rather than in keeping it. They could always do it again. Was it 'valuable'?

[jake-the-peg]

Piece of original religous art taking several days to create?

Have a look at some photographs and tell me what you think it'd be worth
http://www.prajnopaya.org/inst_igmandala_compl etion.htm#

[Octavius]

Maybe they got the whole birth life death rebirth thing going on, the endless cycle of being, of re-creativity and longing for ultimate perfection - art imitating life and all that stuff.

I think to some degree we all do it from time to time whether realising it or not.

I shan�t be doing it to my beautiful valuable car though, well not for a long long while.

[China Doll]

Well you certainly don't dumb down on a Friday do you Jake?! ;0)

I agree that it's an incredibly beautiful piece of work and the idea of all that work and then just letting it go.... Well after my initial reaction of 'utter waste' is actually kind of beautiful too. The symbolism to destroying it is poetic in it's beauty.

Is it a waste to destroy something of beauty and value? Well what about artists who throw away their own work because for whatever reason they don't think it's good enough? We might see beauty and value in it but perhaps all they see is a painful memory, a wrong brush stroke... I don't know....

I think if something is both beautiful and valuable and also has a significant hisorical factor then to destroy that would truely be wasteful.

Could I destroy something that I hold valuable and beautiful just to remind me not to become attached to it? I don't think so. But then the things that I hold valuable and beautiful are not really material things anyway. So I guess it's subjective.

[ruby27]

What an interesting question.

I am not absolutely sure that I know quite what I believe about such a situation. I am confident that we should not become to dependant/attached to objects. They can be useful and atheistically pleasing but they are made by mankind and only as valuable as someone deems it to be, they have no value independent of the relationship between the object and the observer. Someone said to me that she was every bit attached to her possessions as they were to her. That was one of those occasions where complex issues are encapsulated by someone saying something quite simple.

I think I come down on the right of a creator to destroy their work. Those monks had the right to do what they wanted. Just because they can create beauty does not make them beholden to the rest of the world to preserve the work. As for the scenario described about an owner destroying something owned by them but made by another. To trash the Mona Lisa to aid personal development would seem unreasonably selfish as it is irreplaceable. However if the artifact is not unique, I think they had the right to do this. The happiness and fulfilment of an individual is more important than the well being of a vase or a picture.

Although what I do not agree with is the vandalism of objects as a means of denigrating/destroying others culture. Such behaviour is an act representative of an act of aggression.

However I could probably have my view changed by very well reasoned arguments.

[jake-the-peg]

Your logic would imply that if you employed a painter to do a portait of you but decided that you didn't like it you couldn't pay the painter and have it burned.

I know what you mean though, there is a deep abhorance that we feel in seeing something of beauty distroyed.

I think we feel similar seeing something of value distroyed (lighting a cigar with a �50 note) but worse. That is just waste but the destruction of something beautiful can never be replaced.

We see this attachment to beauty as an indication of a cultured person, that we can relate to great art and appreciate it and that it increases the worth of the whole world.

Yet the monks see this as inherent weakness and I guess they're right. Thankfully they subscribe to your idea about only destroying what you create.

Can you imagine a world with radical buddhists breaking into art galleries and torching exhibits because people were too attached to objects of beauty?

[China Doll]

We'd have whole new buddhist bashing threads...

[styley]

I'm not trying to be hateful here by any means jake, don't take this the wrong way, but if you'd never heard of those monks doing that would your life have been affected either way, no. Much, like, if a tree falls in the wood........