Between Beauty and Meaning : Adeyinka Bello and the Eloquent Radiation 1

[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

                                                               

Between Beauty and Meaning

Adeyinka Bello and the Eloquent Radiation

1

Adeyinka Bello in her office at Lagos State University

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

Compcros

Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems

"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"

Adeyinka Bello is an academic in Sociology at the Lagos State University, Lagos, Nigeria, a dedicated political practitioner and social media dynamo whose academic, political and personal activities are dramatized through her social media accounts, particularly on Facebook.

Using her university office as a backdrop, along with various situations in which she is involved, from research trips to political activities to domestic and various outdoor scenes, she creates visual and verbal images of herself, celebrating and reflecting on her life’s journey.

I invite you to accompany me as I also reflect on these depictions of a life in motion beginning from the cover image above, a striking picture of Adeyinka Bello. Life is good. Real art. I would like to relate intimately with this picture, enter into it and share its being.

Why?

How else may I do justice to a composition that is clearly celebratory of the joy of being alive, the powerful red at its centre exploding with the intensity of living, as the lady's features bulge with power in elegant curves?

The dominant muted light of the central figure created by the form of the laughing woman magnifies, by contrast, the crimson radiation at the portrait's centre, a burst of color emanating from the necklace at the lady's throat.

The placing of the jewelry centralizes its presence in the photograph, poised as the necklace is at the juncture of the locus of self represented by the head and the conduit of nerves and life between head and body that is the neck, thereby foregrounding the visual power of the necklace as well as its evocative possibilities.

Some say the world is a vale of sorrow which humans need to endure. The Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, is described as declaring "One thing do I proclaim, brother, now and always, suffering and deliverance from suffering." At his inaugural sermon at the Deer park in Benares, he is quoted as stating that the universe is on fire.

On fire with the lust for life in its illusory transience, a transience like the flow of a stream on which nothing is still, everything changing as it moves in consistent metamorphosis.

Why, therefore, should one stay attached to anything?

The master declared, as he lay on his final resting place, preparatory to leaving the world and entering the supreme state of consciousnesses known as samadhi: "Seek your salvation with diligence. These are my last words!" What is this salvation? Abiding in that which is deathless, which is birthless, which is endless. That which is neither being nor non-being.

Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence, David Benatar's evocatively titled book, bases its thesis on the argument that it is better if people did not exist because being born is against their own interests.

In contrast to these visions uninspired by the palpitations of blood in flesh, the flash of a smile in the pleasure of being, Adeyinka Bello's portrait says something different, evoking Milarepa's cry of pleasure in the exuberance of nature, seeing the beauty of the world and the beauty of ultimate reality as one, a unity of vision which is a later development of Buddhism related to the poet-hermit's reference to his meditation on the Two Bodhi-minds, a striving towards an understanding of ultimate reality which integrates identification with all forms in existence.

His celebration of life's varied dynamism is all the more striking in being framed by his ascetic solitude:

"This lonely spot where stands my hut Is a place pleasing to the Buddhas A place where accomplished beings dwell A refuge where I dwell alone. Above Red Rock Jewel Valley White clouds are gliding, Below, the Tsang River gently flows; Wild vultures wheel between. Bees are humming among the flowers, Intoxicated by their fragrance; In the trees, birds swoop and dart, Filling the air with their song. In Red Rock Jewel Valley Young sparrows learn to fly, Monkeys love to leap and swing, And beasts to run and race, While I practice the Two Bodhi-minds and love to meditate."

Milarepa poem from The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa.
Translated by Garma C.C. Chang.

Shambala: Boston, 1999.5.

Also published on Facebook.

Edited from second publication in 2013 at Adeyinka Olarinmoye: Aesthetics, Thought, Action.

[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

                                                               

Between Beauty and Meaning

Adeyinka Bello and the Eloquent Radiation

2

Adeyinka Bello in her office at Lagos State University

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

Compcros

Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems

"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"

                               

The previous essay, “Between Beauty and Meaning : Adeyinka Bello and the Eloquent Radiation 1”, explored the celebration of life demonstrated by the picture of Adeyinka Bello also central to this essay, concluding by contrasting two different Buddhist perspectives.

This essay explores the same theme through the same picture, this time in relation to Western esotericism, in the first quote, and Hinduism, from which the second quote comes.

"Since we were created with a shout of laughter, let spiritual happiness and holiness be truly one".

William G. Gray. Office of the Holy Tree of Life

Unqualified laughter, focused in the brilliant white of teeth open in joy, their radiance foregrounded by the tender red of lips evoking the rain freshened glory of ripe apples, neck pulsing with urgent life, a palpitating force evoked by the strategic position of the crimson necklace at the juncture of the delicate pillar of neck and robustness of body.

Balance of colours, flashing white teeth, light red necklace and earrings, harmonising with deep red coloured lips, absolute vitality represented by brown skin, projecting a visual force radiating outward...

"(I) salute the universe, which is Bhairava's visible body, the condensation of the flood of the juice (rasa) of consciousness that has assumed a defined form".

From Jayaratha's commentary on Ch. 8, Verse 2, of Abhinavagupta's Tantraloka

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[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

                                                               

Quote from Jayaratha's commentary on Ch. 8, Verse 2, of Abhinavagupta's Tantraloka

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Edited from first publication of 29 October 2013 at Adeyinka Olarinmoye: Aesthetics, Thought, Action.

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Between Beauty and Meaning

Adeyinka Bello and the Eloquent Radiation

3

Academic, political activist and social media figure Adeyinka Bello

in her office at Lagos State University

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

Compcros

Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems

"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"

                            

The first essay in this series, “Between Beauty and Meaning : Adeyinka Bello and the Eloquent Radiation 1,” explored the celebration of life demonstrated by the picture of Adeyinka Bello also central to this essay, concluding by contrasting two different Buddhist perspectives.

The second essay, “Between Beauty and Meaning : Adeyinka Bello and the Eloquent Radiation 2,” engaged with the same theme through the same picture, this time in relation to Western esotericism and Hinduism.

This essay goes further in identifying with the image with the aid of both the Western esoteric expression and an expansion of the Hindu conceptions from part 2, in relation to the sense of joy projected by Bello’s unqualified laughter, focused in the brilliant white of teeth open in joy, their radiance foregrounded by the tender red of lips evoking the rain freshened glory of ripe apples, her neck pulsing with urgent life, a palpitating life force evoked by the strategic position of the crimson necklace at the juncture of the delicate pillar of neck and robustness of body.

The balance of colours, flashing white teeth, light red necklace and earrings, harmonizing with deep red coloured lips, rests on the absolute vitality represented by brown skin, projecting a visual force radiating through beauty both forceful and delicate.

This burst of joy suggests to me William Gray’s invocation from the Western esoteric Office of the Holy Tree of Life :

"Since we were created with a shout of laughter, let spiritual happiness and holiness be truly one."

Incidentally suggesting “Satcitānanda,” the Hindu idea of the unity of being experienced as consciousness intensified by bliss.

This is a sense of the vitality of life force expressed as profound pleasure, a relationship between the deepest fulfillment and cosmic being.

This idea is also suggested by a line from Jayaratha's commentary on Abhinavagupta's Tantraloka, Light on the Tantras, Ch. 8, verse 2:

"(I) salute the universe, which is Bhairava's visible body, the condensation of the flood of the juice (rasa) of consciousness that has assumed a defined form."

The expression depicts, in terms of the universe, the abstraction that is consciousness as the limpid flow of juice, concrete yet dynamic, evocative of the pleasure of a drink going down the gullet.

The cosmic totality is thereby depicted as alive with sentience, purpose and personality, being the body of Bhairava, the condensation of the juice of consciousness as it emanates from Him.

A related sense of the creative power of joy is expressed with graphic force through Adeyinka Bello's radiant teeth, mouth open in laughter, her entire form projecting a life enhancing presence, her laughter resonating with even greater profundity within a timeless stillness, in the transfixed moment represented by the photograph.

That laughter is as the creative force of the cosmos, the primal nexus that is the creator exploding into being in a paroxysm of joy, delight at the stupendous idea that is existence bursting from Her, manifesting as the white hot heat of exploding matter at cosmic genesis, the vibration of life within being, expressed inimitably within the spark in each human eye.

Also published on Facebook.