When I have a terrible need of – shall I say the word – religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.
– Vincent van Gogh
I think this van Gogh quote comes closest to capturing the reason why I love stargazing so much: every time I spend the night gazing at the night sky, I feel a rush of wonder and excitement that gradually subsides into a kind of perfect tranquility as the night wears on. To me this approaches what the late Venerable Buddhadasa Bhikku, prominent Buddhist monk scholar who was heavily influenced by Zen Buddhism, called “temporary Nirvana”: a state in which your mind experiences perfect tranquility and coolness, obsessing over nothing, fully savoring the moment.
When I have a terrible need of – shall I say the word – religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.
– Vincent van Gogh
I think this van Gogh quote comes closest to capturing the reason why I love stargazing so much: every time I spend the night gazing at the night sky, I feel a rush of wonder and excitement that gradually subsides into a kind of perfect tranquility as the night wears on. To me this approaches what the late Venerable Buddhadasa Bhikku, prominent Buddhist monk scholar who was heavily influenced by Zen Buddhism, called “temporary Nirvana”: a state in which your mind experiences perfect tranquility and coolness, obsessing over nothing, fully savoring the moment.
Whenever I gaze at the beautiful twinkling stars that lie dozens of light years away, realizing that I am effectively looking at the past because it takes millions of years for starlight to reach my eyes, hands fixed on the telescope’s right ascension knob just so I can slowly scan the sky for magnificent star clusters and nebulae, feeling tired as hell at 4 in the morning but also determined to stay up because my favorite constellation Pegasus is about to come up from the horizon, I cannot help but feel so close to the universe, yet so insignificant at the same time.
If this doesn’t count as a religious experience, I don’t know what does.
And since I mentioned my favorite artist: aside from the obvious van Gogh Museum, Wikimedia now has a very nice on-line gallery of high-resolution images of many of van Gogh’s works. And you can read all of van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo (unabridged and annotated) on-line at WebExhibits.
Last but not least, you can download the English translation of Buddhadasa’s excellent “why were we born?” article, in which he explains the concept of permanent and temporary Nirvana in detail, as a 9-page PDF file here.
Have you ever experienced a temporary Nirvana?