The Supreme Beauty

Thе idea of beauty as an abstract concept has engaged philosophers for centuries and millennia. What is beauty? Taking it as an abstraction, we have a simple answer that the full repository of beauty is the Supreme Person. And because of his unlimited beauty, therefore, we perceive beauty in this world.

One of the debates about the nature of beauty is whether it is objective or subjective. Is beauty only in the eye of the beholder? If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then it is the subjective idea of beauty. I perceive something and I say, “Oh, how beautiful!” The person next to me says, “Oh, how ugly!” to the same object or the same person or whatever. The argument from that side is therefore: beauty is completely subjective. But there is a sense… No, there is something real about that which we perceive as beautiful. Somebody may say, well, it is a combination of both. You can not say it is one or the other. But what strikes me here is that it seems like the perception of beauty and actual beauty are both at play. They are both very significant. But because here we are speaking about the Supreme Absolute Personality of Godhead, we might want to put more emphasis on the objective side that the Lord is the absolute reality.  He is the absolute beauty or reservoir of all beauty. Therefore, there is perception by us, by living beings, of His beauty. 

An interesting question would be: how do you measure greater or lesser beauty? We often say that one is more beautiful than another. How do you measure that? Or is the idea of measurement irrelevant? Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura states that Mohinī-mūrti is more beautiful than Lakshmi. It is difficult to judge, and yet it brings out how much we are involved in judging beauty, isn’t it? How to explain that on one hand here Mohinī-mūrti is more beautiful than Lakshmi and on the other hand we know that Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī is Madana Mohana Mohinī?

Krishna is Madana Mohana, He who bewilders, Mohana; Madana is He who maddens, namely Kamadeva or Cupid. And then She, Mohinī, bewilders Him who bewilders Cupid. It gets more and more complicated. You start to wonder if there's some infinite regress going on here. Is there someone more beautiful than Rādhārāṇī and so on? No, it stops with Radharani. We insist.

I would add that it is also a matter of context. When it is said that Krishna is more beautiful in Vrindavan than in Mathura or Dvaraka, He is most beautiful in Vrindavan, in its particular context, where Krishna is with Radharani. In Vrindavan, He is more beautiful than elsewhere. But who is more beautiful than Him? Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī.

We can also understand that Krishna in Vrindavan wants Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī to be more beautiful, more attractive than Him. Because the sweetness of Their relationship is such. It's a matter of revelation—but a revelation in relation to the desire of the devotee, because the Lord is always keen to reciprocate the particular love of the devotee. 

From ancient times philosophers speak about the inner beauty as shining through and that there is a kind of inseparability between the good and the beautiful. And even in Chinese philosophy, this idea is there. Where there is goodness, where there is virtue, there is beauty.

—From the lecture on Srimad Bhagavatam 8.9.15-18 in Goloka Dhama, Germany, on July 11, 2025.



Are They Different? 

Once one devotee asked Srila Prabhupada: “We see so many different pictures of Krishna and they are all different. So how does Krishna actually look?” 

Srila Prabhupada was a bit surprised at the question. He didn’t understand what was the problem, what was the difficulty, and, in the room where they were sitting, there were several pictures of Krishna all looking rather different from each other. Prabhupada looked around and gestured to all the pictures and said, “They're all Krishna. What is the problem?” 

And another time, maybe it was Srutakirti Prabhu who accompanied Prabhupada. They were sitting in an airplane and Srila Prabhupada had received a very crude child's picture of Krishna, apparently just as he was leaving the temple. And Srutakirti reports that Prabhupada had this picture of Krishna on the tray in front of him in the airplane. He had the picture in front of him during the whole flight. Prabhupada was chanting japa and his attention was on this picture, this very crude child's picture of Krishna. For him, this was Krishna, and so Prabhupada was chanting.

—From the lecture on Srimad Bhagavatam 8.9.15-18 in Goloka Dhama, Germany, on July 11, 2025.