The Beauty of Darkness

The beauty of the world is in the eye that looks at it. Beauty is not in the world. So the darkness of the world is also the reflection of what the eye carries inside to look with.

The world, then, has nothing to do with what lies outside the eye. Everything the eye looks at is inside it. What could exist outside, if it were not looked at from within?

No, nothing exists but the eye that looks. Perhaps not even this, for the eye, the moment it can look at itself, ceases to exist, being only the gaze of its eye. From where would the eye look that manages to behold the eye?

The beauty of the world is not a quality of the eye's vision. That is, an eye cannot feel proud of seeing beauty in the world, of being the world's finest beholder. Beauty is not, in any real sense, better than darkness. Nor is it its opposite.

The world does not reflect the eye. Could something that cannot look at itself be reflected? The world, however, reflects the reflection of the world. The world says “outside” and the world says “inside.” The world comes to believe it is a world inside, separate from a world outside. That is why the world exists, because the reflection of the world is reflecting it back.

All this is what the eye looks at. Though none of it exists, for it is only the gaze of the eye.

That is why the sages say the world is a dream. The eye is not really looking, for what it looks at does not exist outside that gaze. The eye is dreaming.

The beauty of the world is not a quality of the world's dreaming. Within the dream there is no better or worse dream, for the simple reason that in the eye's gaze there is no other dream to compare itself with than the one it is dreaming. What does it matter if the eye is dreaming darkness, when the world it looks at does not exist, being only a dream?

No, the eye does not look at a world that is better than any other, nor more beautiful than any other. Though perhaps, within the world the eye is looking at, there dwells a dream that tells, in its dreaming, that there are other worlds to compare against. And this world that dreams darkness, when looked at by the eye, is no better than any other dreamed world either.

That is why the sages say the world is not beautiful, but perfect.

Perfection includes beauty and includes darkness. It includes the dreaming of the world and includes the eye that is looking at a world that does not exist outside its dream.

Perfection allows the eye to be dreaming that beautidark world and, at the same time, allows the eye to remain in perfection, seeing that neither beauty nor darkness is in the eye that looks at them.