In the last entry I wrote, explained how Nanairo sounds like 7 colors, invoking the rainbow or the full spectrum. The Kanjis or the ideogram for Nanairo ( 那々色) means something like “beauty, ease, abundance” and “times 2 or repeat” and “color”. So let’s unpack each one of the meanings of 那, starting with beauty, and see what they all have in common.
Those of you who know a bit of Kabbalah, the Jewish mystic tradition, might remember that there is an emanation called Tiferet within the tree of life. Tiferet means directly splendor or glory, and is often translated as beauty or balance. Tiferet is smack in the middle of the tree of life, where it finds balance between the masculine and feminine aspects, left and right column in kabbalah or ida and pingala in yoga. It is also the center within the vertical orientation between the lower and the higher emanations or higher and lower chakras. In the yogic tradition, that would pertain to the location of the heart chakra or anahata.
You might associate the heart center with love and compassion, but maybe not so much with beauty… If we find something, someone beautiful, we get this sensation of WOW!, like we are leaping out of our body to merge with the other. Take a beautiful painting for example. You are mesmerised and lose yourself for a moment, forgetting that you end here and the painting starts over there. The heart has the quality of reaching out and beauty is a prime condition, for the outreach to occur.
Sometimes we associate beauty with superficiality or vainness and it can be. However beauty is also there, where we forget about the world, about our tiny existence and merge with something bigger, like when we see powerful nature or are touched genuinely but an act of kindness or when I look into the eyes of my daughter. Beauty can be the opposite of superficiality; it can lead to the most profound states of being.
Whenever you make your surroundings more aesthetically pleasing, sing a song, dance out of joy, laugh so hard your belly aches… it’s beautiful and that allows love to flow. Living in beauty is living in awe and it allows us to transcend who we are through life itself. Just make sure you share that <3