Mona Lisa Smile

Feminine Charms

It must have struck the viewer in the 16^th Century as especially winsome when they first set eyes on the portrait. It was reported as enigmatic … and raised a curious sensation in the viewer … in the experience of the Renaissance. The period coincided with the rule of Elizabeth I in England … and the beginning of mother Goddess worship in India. In some way … it was the start of something that ushered the women into the 20^th Century as equal partners in life. So what was she smiling about?

And what if any was the response of the men to a smile on a woman … that seems to originate from deep within her soul? Did it herald a new age? Or was the Florentine suggestion of sexual innuendo … the beginning of a new way in which man and woman will view their bodies in a relationship. Certainly the sexual liberation of the 70s … pointed at the pinnacle of the Florentine impulse … that took almost 500 years … to express itself openly in society.

The present generation … hobbles a little … on the promises of love … and tends to take a pinch of salt to love's ideals. It is the experience of the post sexual liberation … and it brings into view what women did before the Florentine period. No doubt … they were entirely focused on their man … and the special way in which they preserved his sexual energies in their relationship. It arose in the woman and transferred itself to the man … in an unspoken part of their natures … that sought to grow in their experiences of humanity.

In India … the mother Goddess worship attracted the attention of the men … in the creator God Brahma … and the establishment of the Brahma Samoj movement picked up quite an interest. It raised the curious study of the legends and the classics … as if man stood in judgement on the accuracy of reporting of the scriptures and literature of the bards. Those were the men … very much our forefathers … who together with the Rishis and Munis … dwelled on the mysteries of nature … and produced the treatises on the Puranas and the Mahabarata … 2-3 millenium in the past.

There were schools of thought … that extended 3,000 years … from master to master … in the preservation of a certain line of thought … that was adopted and practiced in the lives of the society. But something was happening the last 500 years in Indic epistemology of understanding. Colonization introduced academic studies … and science to the Indic experience … and it represented a new way of looking at the individual and life.

Since then … Indic cosmology studies took a turn … from simply ruminating about the thoughts of the their forefathers … and bringing that into blind acceptance and practice. It met the will of the new generation … that had grown weary of rote learning … whose minds were opening up to new understanding and views. Most of all … it raised the awareness of an entire world of experience … beyond the national boundaries … that loomed over past provincial thinking and beliefs.

Gradually their past was breaking up … and in its place … it called for the individual to raise his own thoughts … and to convey that as advancement on his beliefs. Something similar was taking place in the west … but in both cases … the new individual finds himself arrayed against … past thinking … in respect of fathers … forefathers … ancestors … and mentors. Its a deep set relations … embedded in the passions … that once represented the truth about anything.

Man lives his life in common identification with his ancestry … and finds much in his youth to affirm himself of the correctness of past guides. It is interned in his bones … and displays itself in his color … customs … and habits. When we turn the pages over at this time … to review and to change our attitudes … its not unlike … engaging our own past … in order to move it in new directions. One part of the mind seeks change while the other seeks to retain its practices. At times it becomes a game … at other times … an indifference … and sometimes a battle royal.

What man defines as a situation in his life … purely on the basis of a straight view of life … can be very limiting in its experience. But in association with the woman … in the play of the passions … that we encounter in the home and society … gives him a greater avenue for examining issues … and discovering the way … it brings the qualities of the personality to converge in an action or decision.

Perhaps that may account for the smile on Mona Lisa. It teases the man into re-thinking his ways … and to wonder if perhaps he has been approaching the issues all wrong. At the same time … it also suggests the temperament with which a person ought to take that approach to understand himself better. It defines the methodology as a balance of the issues … and to view the passions as knowing themselves one way … and coming at this time to know itself by another … that of the mind.

An individual living in a certain location … may identify himself closely with the places and objects in the environment. That may then extend … to the state … and from there to the nation. Its an identification in the passions … and it takes place naturally … like the way we relate to our forefathers. From there … its not too difficult to find that our passions relate to the whole world … the formation of the planet and perhaps to the universe.

The woman as a store of experiences … that relates to the subtle as much as the gross … represents a treasure in the experience of the man in his pursuit of the ideal. At this time … man has most certainly made contact with his feminine side … but it has to be made to account for a greater experience of knowledge. In sieving through the feminine impulses … the individual may reorganize that into a new experience of humanity. It is his partner in life … and the source of his forefathers … at the base of his understanding.