All rights reserved, Peter Zale . Emotion and art go hand in hand. It is said, for instance, that the artist thinks with emotion rather than logic. This does not put an artist in a superior position because authority in Western culture is left to the logician.
Authority indeed implies hierarchy and so implies culture, civilization and the world.
An artist, more a harbinger of the eternal, might wonder if all the fuss is just there so those who do the fussing might find the same excitement he or she feels in his or her work. In religion, art could find a wife of sorts, an equally emotional thinker, yet one endowed with strict, unforgiving rules, rules reflecting the ultimate need, or fuss, of paving the way to salvation. The art of Christian Europe and Buddhist India share narrow perspectives and subject matters. To delineate the reasons is a complicated matter, for we are dealing with two widely divergent cultures, but to try, we might reflect on the fact that for both life was simple and, by fact and inclination, transitory. Life was short, and, by the light of the ruling spiritual principles, not terribly important.