(Wabi-Sabi: For Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers, by Leonard Koren)
Wabi-sabi is the essence of Japan. The art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity of nature. It means accepting the life cycle – growth, decay and death. It is simple. It is slow and pure. It reveres authenticity above all. Wabi-sabi are all the changes that appear on things with time and use – crack, crevices, rust, spots, frayed edges. Marks of time are are kind of quiet beauty – beauty that waits to be discovered.
It is a fragmentary glimpse: the branch representing the entire tree, shoji screens filtering the sun, the moon 90 percent obscured behind a cloud. It is a richly beauty that is striking but not obvious. For Japanese it is the difference between kirei – just pretty – and omoshiroi, the interestingness that kicks something into the realm of beautiful (Omoshiroi literally means “white faced”, but it’s meanings range from fascinating to fantastic).
D.T. Suzuki described wabi-sabi as “an active aesthetical apprectation of poverty”, with “poverty” having more romantic meaning like being satisfied with the little hut, a room of two tatami mats, like the log cabin of Thoreau. Wabibito means a person free at heart. Simple, unmaterialistic, humble by choice and in tune with nature.
Wabi stems form the root wa, which refers to harmony, peace, tranquility and balance. A common phrase used in conjunction with wabi is “the joy of the little monk in his wind-torn robe”:) A wabi person is free from greed, indolence and anger and understands the wisdom of rocks and grasshoppers. Sabi by itself means “the bloom of time”. It connotes natural progression-tarnish, hoariness, the extinguished gloss, the understanding that the beauty is fleeting. It is a gift of time, an aching poetry in things that carry their years with grace.
