What do you do with ugly?

I want to restart the thoughts from Tuesday’s blog “Rather be doing something else?” about separating life into dualities, such as beautiful/ugly, work/play, right/wrong, win/lose (hmm, may I say Spartan basketball?), etc.

In reality, do opposites exist? Does virtue, for example, have an opposite?

Krishnamurti tells a story about a beautiful home and garden walled off within an ugly, foul village. He says, “To deny ugliness and to hold to beauty is to be insensitive.” We want to be in the beautiful place, but what do we do with the ugly? Shut it out? Resist it?

I hope you'll read the whole story in the link above (click on "story - if the link doesn't work, click here: http://tuljo.store20.com//krishnamurti/commentaries_on_living_series_1/1956-00-00_commentaries_on_living_series_i_chapter_20_), but this statement sums it up:

“The good is not in the garden, away from the village, but in the sensitivity that lies beyond both.”

Of course there may be action we can take to help change what is ugly and unpleasant. But there will always be unpleasantness, and we can't fix it all. Like, there may not be a thing I can do about the strip malls that clutter up and uglify our cities.

Awareness of all that lies around us takes practice. With that, if we find a way to accept what is ugly, unpleasant and problematic along with what we find attractive, pleasant and fun, we just might find that sensitivity to what lies beyond.

And then what?