Coomaraswamy Ananda Quotes & Sayings

We have come to think of art and work as incompatible, or at least independent categories and have for the first time in history created an industry without art. — Ananda Coomaraswamy

Those who think of their house as only a 'machine to live in' should judge their point of view by that Neolithic man, who also lived in a house, but a house that embodied a cosmology. — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

No creature can attain a higher grade of nature without ceasing to exist. — Ananda Coomaraswamy

The contentment of innumerable people can be destroyed in a generation by the withering touch of our civilisation; the local market is flooded by a production in quantity with which the responsible maker of art cannot complete; the vocational structure of society, with all its guild organisation and standards of workmanship, is undermined; the artist is robbed of his art and forced to find himself a "job"; until finally the ancient society is industrialised and reduced to the level of such societies as ours in which business takes precedence of life. Can one wonder that Western nations are feared and hated by other people, not alone for obvious political or economic reasons, but even more profoundly and instinctively for spiritual reasons? — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

The life or lives of man may be regarded as constituting a curve - an arc of time-experience subtended by the duration of the individual Will to Life. — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

To propose an agreement on principles does not involve or imply that the Western world should be Orientalized ; propaganda is out of the question as between gentlemen, and everyone must make use of the forms appropriate to his own psychophysical constitution. It is the European that wants to practice Yoga ; the Oriental points out that he has already contemplative disciplines of his own. — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

The traditional arts and crafts are, in fact, "mysteries," with "secrets" that are not merely "tricks of the trade" of economic value (like the so-much-abused European "patents"), but pertain to the worldwide and immemorial symbolism of the techniques, all of which are analogies or imitations of the creative nature in operation — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

[...] Buddhism has been so much admired mainly for what it is not. — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

Beauty is the attractive power of perfection. — Ananda Coomaraswamy

Becoming is not a contradiction of being but the epiphany of being. — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

Art is nothing tangible. We cannot call a painting 'art' as the words 'artifact' and 'artificial' imply. The thing made is a work of art made by art, but not itself art. The art remains in the artist and is the knowledge by which things are made. — Ananda Coomaraswamy

There is then no sacred or profane, spiritual or sensual, but everything that lives is pure and void. — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

We find "Nirvana" rendered by "annihilation" (no one stops to ask of what?), though the word means "despiration", as Meister Eckhart uses the term. I accuse the majority of Christian writers of a certain irresponsibility, or even levity, in their references to other religions. I should never dream of making use of a Gospel text without referring to the Greek, and considering also the earlier history of the Greek words employed, and I demand as much of Christian writers.
To THE NEW ENGLISH WEEKLY, LONDON - January 8, 1946 — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

We can only suppose that Buddhism has been so much admired mainly for what it is not. A well known modem writer on the subject has remarked that "Buddhism in its purity ignored the existence of a God; it denied the existence of a soul; it was not so much a religion as a code of ethics". We can understand the appeal of this on the one hand to the rationalist and on the other to the sentimentalist. Unfortunately for these, all three statements arc untrue, at least in the sense in which they are meant. It is with another Buddhism than this that we arc in sympathy and are able to agree; and that is the Buddhism of the texts as they stand. — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

The man incapable of contemplation cannot be an artist, but only a skillful workman. — Ananda Coomaraswamy

The Sinhalese people are not, in my opinion, happier or better than they were in the eighteenth century. Talk of progress, and the reality, are not the same. Civilisation is supposed to advance by the creation of new desires, to gratify which the individual must endeavour to improve his position. But in reality it is not quantity, but quality of wants that may be taken as evidence of progress in the Art of Living. No one acquainted with modern Sinhalese taste will pretend that it gives evidence of any improvement in the quality of wants. Indeed, it is sufficiently obvious that quantity, variety, and novelty are not really compatible with quality. — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

Man's activity consists in either a making or doing. Both of these aspects of the active life depend for their correction upon the contemplative life (that is, the Hero). — Ananda Coomaraswamy

What we see in a democracy governed by "representatives" is not a government "for the people" but an organized conflict of interests that only results in the setting up of unstable balances of power. — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

What I have sought is to understand what has been said. — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

It is only when the maker of things is a maker of things by vocation, and not merely holding down a job, that the price of things is approximate to their real value ... — Ananda Coomaraswamy

Myth embodies the nearest approach to absolute truth that can be stated in words. — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

Our hankering for a state of leisure or leisure state is the proof of the fact that most of us are working at a task to which we could never have been called by anyone but a salesman, certainly not by God or by our own natures. Traditional craftsmen whom I have known in the East cannot be dragged away from their work, and will work overtime to their own pecuniary loss.
"Why Exhibit Works of Art? — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

Industry without art is brutality. — Ananda Coomaraswamy

It is the natural instinct of a child to work from within outwards; "First I think, and then I draw my think." What wasted efforts we make to teach the child to stop thinking, and only to observe! — Ananda Coomaraswamy

All that is best for us comes of itself into our hands-but if we strive to overtake it, it perpetually eludes us. — Ananda Coomaraswamy

The vocation, whether it be that of the farmer or the architect, is a function; the exercise of this function as regards the man himself is the most indispensable means of spiritual development, and as regards his relation to society the measure of his worth. — Ananda Coomaraswamy

We say that what seems to "us" irrational in the life of "savages", and may be unpractical, since it unfits them to compete with our material force, represents the vestiges of a primordial state of metaphysical understanding, and tl'1at if the savage himself is, generally speaking, no longer a comprehensor of his own "divine inheritance", this ignorance on his part is no more shameful than ours who do not recognize the intrinsic nature of his "lore", and understand it no better than he does. — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

The most awkward means are adequate to the communication of authentic experience, and the finest words no compensation for lack of it. It is for this reason that we are moved by the true Primitives and that the most accomplished art craftsmanship leaves us cold. — Ananda Coomaraswamy

From one point of view becoming is a humiliation, and from another a royal procession. — Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

The artist is not a special kind of man, but every man is a special kind of artist. — Ananda Coomaraswamy