Art. Its definitions are legion, its meanings multitudinous, its importance often debated. But amid the many contradictory definitions of art, one has always stood the test of time, from the Upanishads in the East, to Michelangelo in the West: art is the perception and depiction of the sublime, the transcendent, the beautiful, the spiritual.
Western humanism has religious and transcendent sources without which it is incomprehensible to itself.
There is a transcendent power in example.
'Genius' which means transcendent capacity of taking trouble, first of all.
I pray we. . . come to this darkness so far above light! If only we lacked sight and knowledge so as to see, so as to know, unseeing and unknowing, that which lies beyond all vision and knowledge. For this would be really to see and to know: to praise the Transcendent One in a transcending way. . . We would be like sculptors who set out to carve a statue. They remove every obstacle to the pure view of the hidden image, and simply by the act of clearing aside they show up the beauty which is hidden.
The distinction between private and public undermines the unity of spiritual strength, draining the public of the transcendent energies while trivializing them because the merely private life provides no proper stage for their action.
I very much believe in values-based leadership, and that the values that I believe in and try to govern by are transcendent values. They have nothing to do with race or even with political parties. Secondly, I think nothing substitutes for the power of the grassroots by showing them the courtesy of going to them where they are and inviting them to take part in the political process.
Humanity could only have survived and flourished if it held social and personal values that transcended the urges of the individual, embodying selfish desires - and these stem from the sense of a transcendent good.
Behind the hieroglyphic streets there would either be a transcendent meaning, or only the earth.
God dwells in His creation and is everywhere indivisibly present in all His works. He is transcendent above all His works even while He is immanent within them.
Traditionally, I have responded to the transcendent mystics of all religions. I have always responded with breathless excitement to anyone who has ever said that God does not live in a dogmatic scripture or in a distant throne in the sky, but instead abides very close to us indeed- much closer than we can imagine, breathing right through our own hearts.
Honor to the idealists, whether philosophers or poets. They have improved us by mingling with our daily pursuits great and transcendent conceptions. They have thrown around our sensual life the grandeur of a better, and drawn us up from contacts with the temporal and the selfish to communion with beauty and truth and goodness.
In the end, the bedrock of existence is not made up of the family, or work, or what others say or think of you, but of moments like this when you are exalted by a transcendent power that is more serene than love. Life dispenses them parsimoniously; our feeble hearts could not stand more.
When we weren't being transcendent we specialized in self-inflicted disaster.
When your practice has led you to experiences that you can't understand, you need a better theory. Otherwise, if you try to understand these transcendent experiences with 'profane' or, we might say, 'materialistic' ways of thinking, your cultivation will be set back.
We can arrive at a point of view where the preservation of the individual activities is no longer inconsistent with our comprehension of the cosmic consciousness or our attainment to the transcendent and supracosmic.
The purpose of truly transcendent art is to express something you are not yet, but something that you can become.
Marx did not recognize that our desire to connect with a transcendent power runs even deeper than our drive for economic satisfaction. Each of us seeks. How we honor each other's search will tell the tale of the next millennium.
Individualism is bad for business - though absolutely necessary for freedom, progressive knowledge, and any possible interface with the transcendent.
The power of transcendent vision is greater than the power of the scripting deep inside the human personality and it subordinates it [the scripting], submerges it, until the whole personality is reorganized in the accomplishment of that vision.