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THE BEAUTY OF WABI SABI --by Leonard Koren, Original Story

In 1992, while living in Japan, I embarked on a project to locate and define the kind of beauty that I felt most deeply attracted to. By "beauty" I meant that complex of exciting, pleasurable sensations ostensibly emanating from things—objects, environments, and even ideas—that makes us feel more alive and connected to the world; that urgent feeling we equate with "the good," "the right," and "the true."

Instinctively I was drawn to the beauty of things coarse and unrefined; things rich in raw texture and rough tactility. Often these things are reactive to the effects of weathering and human treatment. I loved the tentative, delicate traces left by the sun, the wind, the heat, and the cold. I was fascinated by the language of rust, tarnish, warping, cracking, shrinkage, scarring, peeling, and other forms of attrition visibly recorded.

Chromatically, I was enamored of objects and environments whose once-bright colors had faded into muddy tones, or into the smoky hues of dawn and dusk. I was particularly taken by the non-color colors, gray and black. When closely observed, there is an infinite spectrum of blue-grays, brown-grays, red-grays, yellow-grays. . . And green-blacks, orange-blacks, violet-blacks, purple-blacks. . . .

I was also aroused by the beauty of things odd, misshapen, and/or slightly awkward; what conventional thinking might consider "not in good taste" or "ugly". I was aroused by understated, unstudied, unassuming objects that possessed a quiet authority. I gravitated toward things that reduced the emotional distance between them and I; things that beckoned me to get closer, to touch, to relate with.

And lastly, I was attracted to the beauty of things simple, but not ostentatiously austere. Things clean and unencumbered, but not sterilized. Materiality, pared down to essence, with the poetry intact.

I was aroused by understated, unstudied, unassuming objects that possessed a quiet authority.

Having identified what this beauty looked and felt like, I wanted to understand it better intellectually. With pencil and paper I diagrammed the contours of a plausible aesthetic universe. Provisionally, I encapsulated my new domain in the phrase, "a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete."

Over the next year and a half, in libraries both in Japan and the United States, I pored over volumes on any subjects I thought related. Ultimately I condensed a mountain of vague, amorphous, and sometimes contradictory information into a paradigm. The skeletal foundations of this paradigm came from an old diary I kept when, as a young man, I had studied the Japanese tea ceremony.1 Subsequently I packaged this paradigm as a book which I titled Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers.

In this book, for the sake of rhetorical clarity, I broke wabi-sabi down into roughly two components, which I would characterize now as "form" and "spirit."

By "form" I mean the material manifestations; how things wabi-sabi look, feel, sound, etc.

By "spirit" I mean the philosophical basis; the underlying ideas that arguably give rise to wabi-sabi's form.

In truth, identifying wabi-sabi's idea substratum—it's spirit—was an imaginative exercise in induction and inference. Nevertheless, I felt the notions I finally came up with were useful and true. For example:

* On a metaphysical level, wabi-sabi is a beauty at the edge of nothingness. That is, a beauty that occurs as things devolve into, or evolve out of, nothingness. Consequently, things wabi-sabi are subtle and nuanced.

* The beauty of wabi-sabi is an "event," a turn of mind, not an intrinsic property of things. In other words, the beauty of wabi-sabi "happens," it does not reside in objects and/or environments. By analogy, if you fall in love with someone or something—say a physically unattractive person, place, or thing—thereafter you will perceive this someone or something as beautiful (at least some of the time), even if the rest of the world doesn't.

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* Wabi-sabi has a compelling pedagogic dimension. Because things wabi-sabi reveal "honest" natural processes such as aging, blemishing, deterioration, etc., they graphically mirror our own mortal journeys through existence. Accordingly, interacting with wabi-sabi objects and environments surely inclines us towards a more graceful acceptance of our existential fate.

* Wabi-sabi is, at root, an aestheticization of poverty—albeit an elegantly rendered poverty. As such, wabi-sabi is a democratic beauty available equally to rich and poor alike.

* Wabi-sabi is the antithesis of the Classical Western idea of beauty as something perfect, enduring, and/or monumental. In other words, wabi-sabi is the exact opposite of what slick, seamless, massively marketed objects, like the latest handheld wireless digital devices, aesthetically represent.

This last point proved especially resonant for many readers of my book. Perfection is one of our culture's preeminent values. Indeed, we often tacitly define beauty as perfection objectified. But somewhere buried in our psyches is the realization that being human fundamentally implies being imperfect. So when someone suggests that imperfection may be just as beautiful—just as valuable—as perfection, it is a welcome acknowledgement.

On a metaphysical level, wabi-sabi is a beauty at the edge of nothingness. That is, a beauty that occurs as things devolve into, or evolve out of, nothingness.

There is just one minor problem with all that I have related thus far. Although "wabi-sabi" appears to be a Japanese term, if you look "wabi-sabi" up in a Japanese dictionary, you won't find it.

"Wabi" and "sabi" have long existed in Japanese culture, but as separate terms. "Sabi" is ancient. It is found in the first Japanese poetry anthology compiled in the 8th century. At the time, "sabi" meant "to be desolate."

By the 12th century, "sabi" had become an important ideal and critical term of Japanese poetry. "Sabi" then meant "taking pleasure in that which is old, faded, and lonely". It also referred to "a beauty of things withered."

Almost four hundred years later, in the late 15th century, "wabi" emerges as a term to describe a new aesthetic sensibility just beginning to be used in the tea ceremony. For the next one hundred years "wabi" is very fashionable.

During this one-hundred-year period, the meaning of "wabi" expands; "wabi" even subsumes all the meanings of "sabi". In fact, the seminal moment of "wabi" tea is the use of sabi-like terms to describe the new "wabi" objects and environments.

Then from the mid-1600s on, "wabi" ceases to be fashionable. . . .

By the mid-20th century some scholars use the term "wabi," while others use "sabi," to describe essentially the same thing. Some scholars use both terms interchangeably. I've never found a satisfactory explanation other than that, for various historical reasons, the Japanese have always been comfortable with semantic ambiguity and vagueness.

Today, if you ask an educated Japanese person if they know what "wabi-sabi" means, they will invariably answer "yes". If, however, you ask them to define "wabi-sabi," they will probably be unable to do so.

In spite of wabi-sabi's enormous conceptual breadth—its rangy embrace of disparate ideas and material manifestations—"wabi-sabi" nevertheless seems to fill legitimate artistic, spiritual, and philosophical needs. To date, more than a dozen other authors have written books that borrow major elements of my paradigm and married them with the term "wabi-sabi."

So even if "wabi-sabi" didn't "officially" exist before, it exists now.

Wabi-sabi resides in the inconspicuous and overlooked details, in the mirror and the hidden, in the tentative and ephemeral.

Twenty-plus years have elapsed since my initial wabi-sabi formulations. Back then, the industrialized world was just beginning its headlong drive to digitize as much of "reality" as possible and transfer it into a "virtual" or "dematerialized" form. Back then, wabi-sabi's nature-based sense of "aesthetic realism" offered genuine comfort and inspiration for sensitive, creative souls. Will wabi-sabi's quintessentially analog sensibility still provide emotional grounding and creative nourishment going forward into the future? For perspective, and possibly insight, it might be helpful to look back at the time and place when the "wabi" tea ceremony—the form and spirit of wabi-sabi—was being developed.

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Kyoto, Japan in the sixteenth century was embroiled in civil conflict. The mood of the populace was sober, if not dispirited. Many valuable collections of refined Chinese utensils—the kind of "perfect" objects then favored in the tea ceremony—were being destroyed. Substitute objects were needed. Japanese-made surrogates, though less refined and relatively crude, were available and reasonably priced. So they were used.

The locus of this "wabi"/wabi-sabi invention was the tea room. In contrast to the luxurious tea rooms that had previously existed, the "wabi" tea room was rustic and often housed in a small, detached hut, usually surrounded by a tiny garden.

At the beginning of what I would call the "wabi era," tea rooms were four-and-a-half tatami mats, or roughly 81 square feet. By the era's end, tea rooms could be 1/3 that size, or 27 square feet. At the beginning of the wabi era, ceremony participants entered the tea room standing up. By the end of the era, they entered crawling in through a small opening on their hands and knees.

This compression of space, driven by artistic and "spiritual" motives, had the effect of:

* Temporarily equalizing social status. (All participants were equally humbled.)

Intensifying the intimacy of human relations. (And upped the drama.)

Eliminating all unnecessary objects.

And, focusing more attention onto the objects that remained.

As the wabi era progressed, tea rooms and objects became simpler and more modest. Improvisation became commonplace. Objects from non-tea ceremony contexts were increasingly adapted for tea ceremony use. For example, rice bowls were repurposed as tea bowls. Even broken-and-repaired objects were used. Cause and effect made visible—the consequences of use, misuse, and accident—was appreciated.

From the foregoing, it is apparent that the "wabi" sensibility—the form and spirit of wabi-sabi—began mostly as an aesthetic accommodation to the catastrophic realities of the day.

There are the parallels in our time. Increasingly, we can make out the dark outlines of catastrophic scenarios to come. It is predicted that more and bigger climate-related events will intersect catastrophically with an expanding global population. How far will our material resources stretch? After the damage is repeatedly cleared away, will most of us be forced into smaller and smaller living environments, with fewer, and more modest objects?

This need not be tragic. The beauty of wabi-sabi is rooted in modesty—even poverty—that is elegantly perceived. The aesthetic pleasures of wabi-sabi depend on attitude and practice as much, or more, than on the materiality itself. Subtlety and nuance are at wabi-sabi's heart. Wabi-sabi resides in the inconspicuous and overlooked details, in the minor and the hidden, in the tentative and ephemeral. But in order to appreciate these qualities, certain habits of mind are required: calmness, attentiveness, and thoughtfulness. If these are not present, wabi-sabi is invisible.

Footnote

1: The Japanese tea ceremony is what we today might call an "art performance." The host—the artist—prepares and serves bowls of whipped, powdered green tea in an environment consisting of objects, flowers, and a calligraphic scroll, all specifically selected and arranged for his/her guests. The guests, in turn, usually have some prior knowledge of tea ceremony etiquette and artistic precedents, so they can, and do, respond to the host's gestures in an informed spirit. Most contemporary tea ceremonies are, however, highly formalized rituals with little, if any, real invention. Nevertheless, tea ceremony still offers profound aesthetic rewards for receptive participants.

Photo by Leonard Koren

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WABI SABI YOUR LIFE: 6 STRATEGIES FOR EMBRACING IMPERFECTION

Right now in my house, the wall that leads upstairs -- which the previous owners unwisely painted in a matte finish -- bears a trail of small fingerprints. This used to signal another to-do on my list: "Clean those fingerprints off the wall." Again.

But lately, rather than sigh over the decay of my pristine home, I've been learning to embrace wabi sabi, the Japanese art of appreciating the beauty in the naturally imperfect world.

I no longer see those fingerprints as blemishes to be expunged from the wall on my daily roundup of chores, but as the story of my daughters' nightly treks up to bed.

Wabi sabi is an ancient aesthetic philosophy rooted in Zen Buddhism, particularly the tea ceremony, a ritual of purity and simplicity in which masters prized bowls that were handmade and irregularly shaped, with uneven glaze, cracks, and a perverse beauty in their deliberate imperfection.

The Japanese philosophy celebrates beauty in what's natural, flaws and all. The antique bowls above are prized because of (not in spite of) their drips and cracks.

What if we learned to prize the drips and cracks in our messy lives?

Humble Virtues

In the world according to Zen, words only hinder true enlightenment; reducing wabi sabi to mere language seems like sacrilege to its spirit. But loosely translated, "wabi" is simplicity, whether elegant or rustic; "sabi" means the beauty of age and wear.

Leonard Koren, author of "Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers," tried unsuccessfully to discover a precise definition while researching his book. He eventually coined his own, which has become standard for authors in the West: "Wabi sabi is the beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete, the antithesis of our classical Western notion of beauty as something perfect, enduring, and monumental."

To illustrate: Wabi sabi is asymmetrical heirloom vegetables and handmade pottery, crow's feet and the frayed sleeves of a favorite wool sweater, exposed brick and the first draft of a difficult letter.

You won't find wabi sabi in Botox, glass-and-steel skyscrapers, smart phones, or the drive for relentless self-improvement. It's a beauty hidden right in front of our eyes, an aesthetic of simplicity that reveals itself only when animated through the daily work of living.

In "The Unknown Craftsman," Japanese art critic Soetsu Yanagi writes, "We in our own human imperfections are repelled by the perfect, since everything is apparent from the start and there is no suggestion of the infinite."

As a wine writer, I am far less drawn to generic, technically correct wines than to wines with complexity -- even if that complexity comes with a whiff of fault. A perfect wine is too obvious, while one with nuance ("bottled poetry," as Robert Louis Stevenson calls it) leaves room for exploration of the unknown.

Yet a badly made wine won't pass muster with my critical palate; nor are stained plastic dishes or a weed-infested garden wabi sabi in their defects. A wabi sabi approach to life isn't about giving way to carelessness or seeing a junk pile through rose-colored glasses. It's about appreciating, showcasing, and sustaining the beauty of what's natural.

Nothing about nature is linear or symmetrical or impervious to decay. And yet what could be more mesmerizing?

ABANDONING "PERFECT" I think of the paraphernalia my young daughters pick up on our walks, things I stopped noticing long ago -- discarded feathers, stones worn shiny by water. They're drawn to these treasures for their expressive textures, shapes, and colors, each thing unique in the world. So miraculous just the way they are, and yet so simple.

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In our culture, "simplicity" is often code for a life that's meticulously organized or for spare, boutique perfection. We're brought up to strive for the best, the brightest, and most extraordinary. It may not be natural to us to seek pleasure in the quotidian, let alone a Japanese concept that celebrates rust.

But what could be more radically simple than acceptance? As Richard Powell, author of "Wabi Sabi Simple," told me, "Accepting the world as imperfect, unfinished, and transient, and then going deeper and celebrating that reality, is something not unlike freedom."

I find the idea of abandoning "perfect" and even "good enough" irresistibly tempting. Life -- the fingerprints, scars, and laugh lines -- is itself perfectly imperfect, and I can embrace the beauty in that.

WABI SABI IN ACTION

By its very nature, the philosophy of wabi sabi can't be packaged into six foolproof tips, but its spirit can simplify every aspect of the way we live.

RELATIONSHIPS

The Meaning

When the samurai entered a teahouse, they removed their swords, leaving behind their conflicts and pretensions. Similarly, Powell says, a wabi sabi relationship is one in which you deliberately accept each other where you are -- imperfect, unfinished, and mortal.

"Appreciation for imperfections in others, and even in yourself, is the essential wabi sabi frame of mind," Koren says. "Deep down you know perfection can be rather dull. As singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen poetically put it, 'There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.'"

The Action

A person is brimming with engrossing sensory details. "If we're able to find the act of drinking tea engaging, fascinating, and absorbing, how much more engaging can a human be?" asks Simon Brown, author of "Practical Wabi Sabi." "Try shedding expectations and assumptions, and focus on the sensations of the other person."

Accepting someone else's faults, rather than taking them on as a project to be fixed, leaves you the time and emotional energy for enjoying that person.

FOOD

The Meaning

"Wabi sabi principles suggest our food should be natural, simple, and prepared from intuition," Brown says. Making a meal should be a creative, joyful act, not a test you can fail.

That means improvising with a recipe when you have basil but not tarragon; reveling in the textures of a homemade dish that's a bit more splattered than a professionally plated version in a magazine; and appreciating nourishing, whole ingredients. It's about savoring your food.

Fruits and vegetables from your own garden or the farmers' market are an elemental expression of wabi sabi. Lumpy, irregular, and imperfect, a juicy, ripe heirloom tomato is more compelling to look at and to eat than a perfectly formed hothouse version shipped in from another state.

The Action

Don't just taste flavors but inhale the richness of smells, hear the sounds your food makes, feel the textures (wet, chewy, crunchy) in your mouth. "Part of the wabi sabi approach is training ourselves to appreciate the simplest things in life and using them to engage our senses," Brown says.

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Choose dishes, silverware, and cooking utensils with heft and texture to deepen the sensory experience of eating.

"Show me the wood in the pepper mill, let me see the cracks in the glaze on the old serving plate," Powell says. "Listen to the tinkling of silverware and the settling of ice in tumblers -- all reminders that we depend on the world, the earth, the soil and sea."

HOME

The Meaning

A wabi sabi home is full of rustic character, charm, and things that are uniquely yours, says Robyn Griggs Lawrence, author of "Simply Imperfect: Revisiting the Wabi-Sabi House," to be published next spring.

If an old chest has significance to you, for example, a missing drawer pull doesn't have to be an eyesore. It can also be a sign that the piece has been used and enjoyed. Utsukushii, a Japanese word for "beautiful," evolved from the original meaning, "being loved."

The Action

Wabi sabi celebrates what's handmade. Instead of settling for mass-market junk, furnish your home with unique, quality pieces. A lovingly thrifted kitchen table has more value than a gleaming new piece of particle board.

Using materials that weather beautifully, like wood, stone, and metal, will let you just sit back and appreciate what you own as you grow old with it, rather than fretting over cracked plastic or warped vinyl.

Think about a color palette that mimics what's found in nature: greens, grays, earth tones, and rusts. This creates an atmosphere of tranquillity and harmony. Wabi sabi doesn't mean embracing clutter, Griggs Lawrence explains. "There is thought and work behind it, not neglect." An exquisite teapot can't shine if it's wedged into a crowded china cabinet; clear the space so you can give it a shelf of its own and truly appreciate it each time you pass by. Every object in your home should be beautiful, useful, or both.

BEAUTY

The Meaning

Yes, the beauty of youth is almost universally revered. But in wabi sabi, as in life itself, change is the only constant, and Brown encourages us to embrace it.

"The starting point of cultivating a wabi sabi beauty is to appreciate the process of aging," he says. "Try not to get caught up in wanting to stagnate in one part of your natural progression through life."

Powell adds that it's unrealistic to change our hardwired preference for smooth skin and firm bodies, but it's possible to broaden our perspective and open up to seeing new kinds of beauty.

After all, our stories lie in our imperfections: the scar we got from doing a sport we love, the chipped nails after a day spent in our beloved garden.

The Action

Wabi sabi beauty is not about relinquishing self-care, which can be a form of attention and presence in your life. The Japanese tea masters took exquisite care of their pottery, cracked and imperfect as it was. Likewise, you can pamper your body without nipping and tucking it into submission.

True beauty, in a wabi sabi sense, is about taking care of yourself, not turning your face into a blank canvas. If we stop spending the time to spackle over every freckle or cover up every gray hair, we can be more fully engaged with the world -- which gives us real charisma.

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Instead of an arsenal of products targeted to your every perceived flaw, stick to a few tried-and-true favorites. When you shine through, that's beautiful.

CLOSET

The Meaning

A wabi sabi clothing philosophy is about appreciating what you already have -- a well-worn bag, for instance. "Appreciating what you already have is more important than acquiring new things," Koren says.

Instead of spending energy each season on the treadmill of wardrobe updates, revisit what you love and remember why you love it. What do these clothes say about who you've become?

A carefully mended patch in this scarf, for example, turns it into something only one person owns -- which makes a greater (not to mention simpler) fashion statement than any pristine thing pulled straight from the rack.

The Action

You don't need to hang on to soiled, stained, frumpy old things that make you feel unkempt and out of sorts, or engage in a quest for the perfect Ten Timeless Pieces.

But don't throw away a favorite sweater just because it's grown faded with time. Your cherished standbys become unique expressions of you when they're charmingly combined with your fresher pieces, Koren says.

When choosing new clothes, Powell suggests seeking out natural, sustainably made garments of wool, cotton, hemp, bamboo, or leather.

"Wool has become a favorite of mine because of its natural durability and how wholesome it looks," he says. "Leather, while frowned upon by some who embrace wabi sabi, is both natural and eminently disposed to improve with age. Leather coats and shoes become even more beautiful as they wear over time."

WORK

The Meaning

Most workplaces -- which are dedicated to excellence, even perfection -- don't seem the ideal arena to apply wabi sabi. But "on the deepest level, wabi sabi at work is being valued fully for who and what you are," says Whitney Greer, coauthor of "Wabi-Sabi at Work."

"Align your actions and words to your values, and you'll reflect your best self. Authenticity goes a long way toward eliminating power struggles in the workplace." Which is probably the most significant thing most of us could do to simplify our lives at the office.

The Action

"Uncover what's distinctive about you as a person and highlight that," Greer says. If you're a natural collaborator but all your coworkers are huddled in their cubes, you'll shrivel up and may not even understand why.

Powell believes it's helpful to remember the bigger picture of your work, the transience of both the job and your product or service. A little perspective also helps you step back from the small frustrations that aren't worth the complexity they add to your workday.

"Everything eventually wears out and is discarded," Powell says. "Knowing this allows you to find beauty in the entropy." And there is nothing more wabi sabi than that.