Between Beauty and Meaning
Adeyinka Bello and the Eloquent Radiation
1
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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