Inner Beauty is the True Beauty
All human beings are bestowed with an inborn quality of perceiving beauty. Everyone likes beauty. Everyone wants to look beautiful and appreciate beautiful living beings and objects; but yes, each person has his own perception of beauty. The same object may appear beautiful to one and ugly to another and this entirely depends upon the perception of each person.
Due to the influence of consumerist culture, our concept of beauty has also become very materialistic. All the measures of beauty have shrunk down to the level of glamorous physical appearances today. In reality, physical body is only a means of expressing beauty. The real beauty emanates from thoughts and emotions. It expresses itself not by the skin colour or external appearance but how one conducts oneself. There is a big difference between appearing beautiful and being beautiful. Just to appear beautiful it is possible to guise oneself with artificial means, but to become greatly beautiful one needs to acquire the beauty that exists in the form of higher inner human qualities.
Beauty is that which attracts our mind and which gives us an experience of inner happiness. Often people consider as a measure of beauty only physical appearance, especially the fairness of skin, and waste their precious resources, time and energy in skin and beauty products.
Only that person is beautiful who has a good attitude towards himself and towards others. A person's beauty should reflect not through the skin but through the behaviour in the form of virtuous traits of personality. Beauty means — oneness of a person's thinking, character and behaviour, and evolution of his inner qualities. When good inner traits begin to express themselves in a person's external conduct then that person can be called truly beautiful.
Lupita Nyongo, who was born in Mexico City and was black, also thought that she could never be successful because of her complexion. She recently won an award for Best Performance in a Supporting Role in the Hollywood movie 'Twelve Years a Slave.' After she won the award she received a letter that said: "Dear Lupita, I think you're really lucky to be this black but yet this successful in Hollywood overnight. I was just about to buy Dencia's Whitenicious cream to lighten my skin when you appeared on the world map and saved me." The girl who wrote this letter was also black and used to believe that black girls can never be successful.
We assess beauty by the fairness of the skin, but the truth is, beauty is determined by the glow of our personality. And this glow appears only when a person's thoughts, emotions and behaviour are righteous and pure. If a person is fair skinned but his behaviour is unworthy, he cannot be called beautiful. Such a person may temporarily impress and attract others by his external charm, but he would never be able to establish deep and lasting personal relationships, since these can be established only by inner beauty.
People from different regions of the world — Japan, China, America, Russia, France, Africa, India, etc. — all have different facial features. There is something unique in the physique and facial features of all the people of a region which identifies them with the region they belong to. There is no unique measure of beauty; the measures change according to features specific to each race of human beings. But even then, in all corners of the world we can find people who have either a charming smile, or a melodious voice, or courteous behaviour, or exceptional talent.
Param Pujya Gurudev Pt. Shriram Sharma Acharya ji used to say — 'It is million times better to do what should be written as a sermon than to write a sermon.' This means — the higher the quality of sentiments a person applies in his work, his inner beauty gets enhanced to the same extent. The beauty of physical body is transient. With the increasing age this beauty slowly begins to fade. As time passes by, only good deeds performed by a person accumulate and enhance his radiance and make him a centre of attraction.
True beauty means — pleasant experiences and good feelings. True beauty is that which pleases heart and soul. Beauty is not that which is seen from outside; it is a pleasant experience that exists inside every human being. Nature and God have together cast beauty in one form or the other uniquely in every human being; one only needs to realize and express it.
"The final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands." — Anne Frank
"The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do." — Steve Jobs