griggslawrence-whatiswabisabi

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What isWabi-Sabi?Robyn Griggs Lawrence

Pared down to its barest essence, wabi-sabiis the Japanese art of finding beautyin imperfection and profundity in nature, of accepting the natural cycle of growth,decay, and death. Its simple, slow, and unclutteredand it reveres authenticityabove all. Wabi-sabiis flea markets, not warehouse stores; aged wood, not Pergo;rice paper, not glass. It celebrates cracks and crevices and all the other marks that

time, weather, and loving use leave behind. It reminds us that we are all but transientbeings on this planetthat our bodies as well as the material world around us arein the process of returning to the dust om which we came. Throughwabi-sabi,we learn to embrace liver spots, rust, and ayed edges, and the march of time theyrepresent.

Wabi-sabiis underplayed and modest, the kind of quiet, undeclared beauty thatwaits patiently to be discovered. Its a agmentary glimpse: the branch represent-ing the entire tree, shojiscreens filtering the sun, the moon 90 percent obscuredbehind a ribbon of cloud. Its a richly mellow beauty thats striking but not obvious,that you can imagine having around you for a long, long timeKatherine Hepburn

versus Marilyn Monroe. For the Japanese, its the difference between reimerelyprettyand omoshiroi, the interestingness that kicks something into the realmof beautiful (omoshiroiliterally means white faced, but its meanings range omfascinating to fantastic). Its the peace found in a moss garden, the musty smell ofgeraniums, the astringent taste of powdered green tea. My favorite Japanese phrasefor describingwabi-sabiisnatsukashii furusato, or an old memory of my hometown(this is a prevalent mind-set in Japan these days, as people born in major urban ar-eas such as Tokyo and Osaka wax nostalgic over grandparents country houses thatperhaps never were. They can even rent grandparents who live in prototypicalcountry houses and spend the weekend there).

Daisetz T. Suzuki, who was one of Japans foremost English-speaking authoritieson Zen Buddhism and one of the first scholars to interpret Japanese culture forWesterners, describedwabi-sabias an active aesthetical appreciation of poverty. Hewas referring to poverty not as we in the West interpret (and fear) it but in the moreromantic sense of removing the huge weight of material concerns om our lives.Wabiis to be satisfied with a little hut, a room of two or three tatami mats, likethe log cabin of Thoreau, he wrote, and with a dish of vegetables picked in theneighboring fields, and perhaps to be listening to the pattering of a gentle springrainfall.

In Japan, there is a marked difference between a Thoreau-like wabibito(wabiper-son), who is ee in his heart, and amakoto no hiin, a more Dickensian character

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whose poor circumstances make him desperate and pitiful. The ability to make dowith less is revered; I heard someone refer to awabibitoas a person who could makesomething complete out of eight parts when most of us would use ten. For us inthe West, this might mean choosing a smaller house or a smaller car, orjust as a

means of getting startedrefusing to supersize our ies.The wordswabiand sabiwere not always linked, although theyve been together

for such a long time that many people (including D. T. Suzuki) use them inter-changeably. One tea teacher I talked with begged me not to use the phrasewabi-sabibecause she believes the marriage dilutes their separate identities; a tea master inKyoto laughed and said theyre thrown together because it sounds catchy, kind oflike Ping-Pong. In fact, the two words do have distinct meanings, although mostpeople dont fully agree on what they might be.

Wabistems om the root wa, which refers to harmony, peace, tranquillity, andbalance. Generally speaking, wabi had the original meaning of sad, desolate, and

lonely, but poetically it has come to mean simple, unmaterialistic, humble by choice,and in tune with nature. Someone who is perfectly herself and never craves tobe anything else would be described as wabi. Sixteenth-century tea master Joodescribed awabitea man as someone who feels no dissatisfaction even though heowns no Chinese utensils with which to conduct tea. A common phrase used incounction with wabi is the joy of the little monk in his wind-torn robe. A wabiperson epitomizes Zen, which is to say, he or she is content with very little; ee omgreed, indolence, and anger; and understands the wisdom of rocks and grasshoppers.

Until the fourteenth century, when Japanese society came to admire monks andhermits for their spiritual asceticism, wabi was a pejorative term used to describe

cheerless, miserable outcasts. Even today, undertones of desolation and abandon-ment cling to the word, sometimes used to describe the helpless feeling you havewhen waiting for your lover. It also carries a hint of dissatisfaction in its under-handed criticism of gaud and ostentationthe defining mark of the ruling classeswhenwabisu(a taste for all things wabi) exploded in the sixteenth century. In acountry ruled by warlords who were expected to be conspicuous consumers, wabi be-came known as the aesthetic of the peoplethe lifestyle of the everyday samurai,who had little in the way of material comforts.

Sabiby itself means the bloom of time. It connotes natural progressiontarnish,hoariness, rustthe extinguished gloss of that which once sparkled. Its the under-standing that beauty is fleeting. The words meaning has changed over time, omits ancient definition, to be desolate, to the more neutral to grow old. By the thir-teenth century,sabis meaning had evolved into taking pleasure in things that wereold and faded. A proverb emerged: Time is kind to things, but unkind to man.

Sabi things carry the burden of their years with dignity and grace: the chillymottled surface of an oxidized silver bowl, the yielding gray of weathered wood,the elegant withering of a bere autumn bough. An old car le in a field to rust,as it transforms om an eyesore into a part of the landscape, could be considered

Americas contribution to the evolution ofsabi. An abandoned barn, as it collapsesin on itself, holds this mystique.

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Cleanliness implies respect. Both ancient and modern tea masters teach that eventhe poorestwabitea person should always use esh green bamboo utensils and newwhite cloths for wiping the tea bowl. In tea, the hosts cleanliness is considered aclear indicator of his state of mind and his devotion to the way of tea. ChanoyuIchieshu, a tea textbook published in 1956, even goes so far as to advise guests tolook into the hosts toilet if they wish to understand his spiritual training.

Im definitely not advocating this extreme. In fact, Im mortified at the thoughtof anyone judging me on the state of my own toilets. But the tea masters point isvalid: Spaces that have been thoroughly and lovingly cleaned are ultimately morewelcoming. When the bed is neatly made, the romance of a ayed quilt blossoms.The character imparted by a wood floors knots and crevices shines through whenthe crumbs are swept away. A scrubbed but faded kilim, thrown over a sofa thatsseen one too many stains, transforms it into an irresistible place to rest.

Wabi-sabis roots lie in Zen Buddhism, which was brought om China to Japan

by Eisai, a twelh-century monk. Zen, with its principles of vast emptiness andnothing holy, stresses austerity, communion with nature, and above all, reverence foreveryday life as the real path to enlightenment. To reach enlightenment, Zen monkslived ascetic, oen isolated lives and sat for long periods of concentrated meditation.

To help his fellow monks stay awake during these excruciating meditation sessions,Eisai taught them how to process tea leaves into a hot drink. Once Eisai was gone,though, tea took on a very different life of its own. Around the fourteenth century,the upper classes developed elaborate rituals involving tea. Large tearooms were builtin an ostentatious style known as shoin, with numerous Chinese hanging scrolls anda formal arrangement of tables for flower vases and incense burners. Tea practitioners

proved their wealth and status through their collections of elegant Chinese-style teautensils during three-day weekenders where up to one hundred cups of teaas wellas food and sakewere served.

Then along came Murata Shuko, an influential tea master who also happened tobe a Zen monk. In a radical fashion departure, Shuko began using understated, lo-cally produced utensils during his tea gatherings. Saying it is good to tie a praisedhorse to a straw-thatched house, he combined rough, plain wares with famed Chi-nese utensils, and the striking contrast made both look more interesting. Shukossuccessor, Joo, was even more critical of men whose zeal for rare or famed uten-sils was their main motivation for conducting tea. Joo began using everyday itemssuch as thementsu, a wooden pilgrims eating bowl, as a wastewater container, and aShigarakionioke, a stoneware bucket used in silk dyeing, as a water jar. He broughtunadorned celadon and Korean peasant wares into the tearoom.

It was Joos disciple Sen no Rikyu, however, who is widely credited with estab-lishing the quiet, simple ceremony that made it possible for everyonenot just thewealthyto practice tea. In the sixteenth centurythe beginning of an age of peacefollowing several long centuries of civil war in Japangaudiness was all the rage, andRikyus tea became an oasis of quiet, simple taste. He served tea in bowls made byanonymous Korean potters and indigenous Japanese crasmen, the most famous ofwhich are the Raku familys style. He created tiny tea huts (one and a half tatamimats, as opposed to the four-and-one-half- to eighteen-mat rooms that had been

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the norm) based on the traditional farmers hut of rough mud walls, a thatched roof,and organically shaped exposed wood structural elements. The hut included ani-jiriguchi, a low entryway that forced guests to bow and experience humility as theyentered. Rikyu made some of his own utensils of unlacquered bamboo (as commonas crabgrass in Japan, but nowadays a Rikyu original is worth as much as a Leonardoda Vinci painting), and he arranged flowers simply and naturally in bamboo vases(shakuhachi) and baskets. Rikyus ceremony became known aswabichado(chadomeans the way of tea), and it endures in Japan to this day.

We Westerners tend to scratch our heads at the thought of four hours spent sittingon our knees, participating in an elaborate ritual during which a charcoal fire is built,a meal of seasonal delicacies is served with sake, one bowl of green tea is made andshared among the guests, and then individual bowls of othy thin tea are madeby whisking hot water and matcha. What most of us dont realize, however, isthat tea embodies so much of the beauty that makes up Japanese culture. To truly

understand tea, you must also study poetry, art, literature, architecture, legacy, andhistory. Tea practitioners are accomplished in the arts of flowers, fine cuisine, andperhaps most importantetiquette (sarei). And the four principles of teaharmony( wa), respect ( kei), purity ( sei), and tranquillity ( jaku)could of coursebe the means to any good life.

Tea, in its current form, was born out of a medieval society rife with terriblewarfare, yet the samurai were willing to set aside their rankand their swordsto become equals within the tearoom. The rooms design is deliberately simple andclean; its meant to be a sanctuary. In this thatched hut there ought not to be a speckof dust of any kind; both master and visitors are expected to be on terms of absolute

sincerity; no ordinary measures of proportion or etiquette or conventionalism are tobe followed, declaresNanbo-roku, one of most ancient and important textbooks ontea. A fire is made, water is boiled, and tea is served; this is all that is needed here, noother worldly considerations are to intrude. As soon as we enter the tearoom, wereasked to shake off our woes and worries and connect with others, face harmonious,words loving.

Tea brings people together in a nonthreatening place to escape the modern world,then they can go back out and take that with them, Gary Cadwallader, an American-born tea master who teaches at the Urasenke Center in Kyoto, explained to me. Itseems to me that we Americans who lack the timeor the desireto learn tea couldtake the essence of that statement and apply it to our own lives.

If a iend visits you, make him tea, wish him welcome warmly with hospitality,Joo, one of Japans earliest tea masters, wrote. Set some flowers and make him feelcomfortable. This is embodied in a common Japanese phrase, shaza ssa, whichtranslates, Well, sit down and have some tea. What if we adopted that phrase andlearned to say it more oenwhen the kids get home om school (before the rushto hockey and ballet), when our neighbor stops by, when we feel our annoyance levelwith our spouse starting to rise? If we just allowed ourselves to stop for a moment,sit down together, and share a cup of tea, what might that moment bring?

In learning tea, were constantly reminded that every meeting is a once-in-a-lifetime occasion to eoy good company, beautiful art, and a cup of tea. We never

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know what might happen tomorrow, or even later today. Stopping whatever it isthats so important (dishes, bill paying, work deadlines) to share conversation anda cup of tea with someone you loveor might loveis an easy opportunity to pro-mote peace. It is om this place of peace, harmony, and fellowship that the truewabi-sabi spirit emerges.

Wabi-sabiis not a decorating style but rather a mind-set. Theres no list of rules;we cant hang crystals or move our beds and wait for peace to befall us. Creating awabi-sabihome is the direct result of developing our wabigokoro, orwabimind andheart: living modestly, learning to be satisfied with life as it can be once we stripaway the unnecessary, living in the moment. You see? Simple as that.

This is tough in any culture, of course, but darned near impossible in our own.In America were plied daily with sales pitches that will help us improve ourselves,our circumstances, our homes. We can have the whitest teeth, the cleanest carpets,and the biggest SUV money can buy. All of this flies in the face ofwabigokoro, as

described in Rikyus sacred tea text, Nanporoku: A luxurious house and the tasteof delicacies are only pleasures of the mundane world, he wrote. It is enough ifthe house does not leak and the food keeps hunger away. This is the teaching ofthe Buddhathe true meaning ofchado.

This is un-American. Or is it? I believe there exists in all of us a longing forsomething deeper than the whitest teeth, sparkling floors, and eight cylinders. Whatif we could learn to be content with our lives, exactly as they are today? Its a lothought but one thats certainly worth entertaining.

You can start cultivating this mind-set in small ways, taking a lesson om tea.In learning to conduct tea, were taught to handle every utensil, om the bamboo

water scoop to the tea bowl, as if it were precious, with the same respect and carewe would use to handle a rare antique. You can do the same thing with the itemsyou use every day.

wa, kei, sei, jakuCalligraphy by Onozawa Kankai

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