wabi-sabi

Pared down to its barest essence, wabi-sabi is the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature, of accepting the natural cycle of growth, decay and death. It is simple, slow and uncluttered -- and it reveres authenticity above all.

It reminds us that we are all but transient beings on this planet--that our bodies as well as the material world around us are in the process of returning to the dust from which we came. Through wabi-sabi, we learn to embrace imperfection and appreciate the beauty of things as they truly are.

"Japanese art, infused with the spirit of wabi sabi, seeks beauty in the truths of the natural world, looking towards nature for its inspiration.  It refrains from all forms of intellectual entanglement, self-regard, and affectation in order to discover the unadorned truth of nature.  Since nature can be defined by its asymmetry and random imperfections, wabi sabi seeks the purity of natural imperfection."

---Juniper

Wabi Sabi:  The Japanese Art of Impermanence

"Dr. Yoko Woodson explains wabi sabi by saying, 'Nonattachment is a subtle but strong quality in Japanese culture.  Using the cherry tree as a metaphor, the brief one week that it blossoms is a precious time to view, and appreciate, its beauty.  We call this eagerly anticipated event hanami.  It takes a whole year's preparation for the cherry blossom to bloom, only to be dissolved by the wind into a snowfall of petals on the ground.'  Hence, given life's impermanence (mujo), fleeting moments of beauty are treasured all the more--but with total nonattachment and a deep feeling of gratitude."

---Sunamita Lim

Japanese Style

Sabi by itself means "the bloom of time." It connotes natural progression -- tarnish, hoariness, rust -- the extinguished gloss of that which once sparkled. It is the understanding that beauty is fleeting. The word's meaning has changed over time, from its ancient definition "to be desolate" to the more neutral "to grow old." By the thirteenth century, sabi's meaning had evolved into taking pleasure in things that were old and faded.

Sabi things carry the burden of their years with dignity and grace: the chilly mottled surface of an oxidized silver bowl; the yielding gray of weathered wood; the elegant withering of a bereft autumn bough. An old car left in a field to rust, as it transforms from an eyesore into a part of the landscape, could be considered America's contribution to the evolution of sabi. An abandoned barn, collapsing in upon itself, also holds this mystique.

There is an aching poetry in things that carry this patina--and it transcends the Japanese. We Americans are ineffably drawn to old European towns with their crooked cobblestone streets and chipping plaster, to places battle-scarred with history much deeper than our own. We seek sabi in antiques and even try to manufacture it in distressed furnishings. True sabi cannot be acquired, however. It is a gift of time.

So now we have wabi, which is humble and simple, and sabi, which is rusty and weathered. And these terms have joined together into a phrase that rolls off the tongue like ping-pong. Does that then mean that the wabi-sabi house is full of things that are humble, plain, rusty and weathered? That is the easy answer. The amalgamation of wabi and sabi in practice, however, takes on much more depth. 

excerpted from the writings of the architect Tadao Ando 

In a book that is as much about uncluttering and digging through flea market castoffs as it is about "quieting" one’s home and abandoning the urge for "the perfect home," the author guides readers through the process of creating a home that embraces elements of wabi-sabi.

---Robyn Griggs Lawrence

The Wabi-Sabi House:  The Japanese Art of Imperfect Beauty