Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers by Leonard Koren

Wabi-sabi is beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.
It is a beauty of things modest and humble.
It is a beauty of things unconventional.

The closest english word to wabi-sabi is "rustic" (as if simple, artless, unsophisticated, with surfaces rough or irregular).

Those who know don't say, those who say don't know.

Zen doctrine

Comparison between wabi-sabi and modernism, most outstanding points.

Wabi-sabi universe

1. Metaphysical basis
   Things are either devolving toward, or evolving from, nothingness.

   • "Wabi-sabi, in its purest, most idealized form, is precisely about these delicate traces [of life], this faint evidence, at the borders of nothingness".
   • While the universe destructs it also constructs.
   • Nothingness is alive with possibility, unlike emptiness in the west.
   • Suggests that the universe is in constant state of motion toward or away from potential.
2. Spiritual values
   Truth comes from the observation of nature.

   • Everything eventually fades into oblivion and nonexistence.
   • When is something “complete”?
   "Greatness" exists in the inconspicuous and overlooked deatils.

   • Wabi-sabi is not found in nature in moments of bloom and lushness, but at moments of inception and subsiding. The minor and the hidden, things so subtle it’s invisible to the vulgar eye.
   • To experience wabi-sabi one needs to slow down, be patient and look closely.
   Beauty can be coaxed out of ugliness.

   • The beauty of wabi-sabi is, in one respect, the condition of coming to terms with what you consider ugly.
   • Beauty is a dynamic event that can happen at any moment given the certain circumstances, context and point of view.
3. State of mind
   Acceptance of the inevitable.

   All around, no flowers in bloom
   Nor maple leaves in glare,
   A solitary fisherman's hut alone
   On the twilight shore
   Of this autumn eve.
   

   Fujiwara no Teika (1162-1241)

   Appreciation of the cosmic order.
4. Moral precepts
   Get rid of all that is unnecessary.

   • Material poverty, spiritual richness" are wabi-sabi bywords.
   • Wabi-sabi is exactly about the delicate balance between the pleasure we get from things and the pleasure we get from freedom from things.
   Focus on the intristic and ignore material hierarchy.

   • In wabi-sabi, there is no "valuable,' since that would imply "not valuable." An object obtains the state of wabi-sabi only for the moment it is appreciated as such.
5. Material qualities
   The suggestion of natural process.

   • Things wabi-sabi are expressions of time frozen. They record all the weathering and human treatment and on the edge of dematerialization still possess strength of character.
   Irregular.

   • Indifferent to conventional good taste.
   Intimate.

   • Things wabi-sabi are usually small and compact, quiet and inward-oriented. They beckon: get close, touch, relate. Small dim and womb-like places.
   Unpretentious.

   • Things wabi-sabi are appreciated only during direct contact and use; they are never locked away in a museum.
   Earthy.
   Murky.

   • Wabi-sabi comes in an infinite spectrum of grays and browns.
   Simple.

   • Nothingness is the ultimate simplicity.
   • The simplicity of wabi-sabi is probably best described as the state of grace arrived at by a sober, modest, heartfelt intelligence.
   • Keep things clean and unencumbered, but don't sterilize. (Things wabi-sabi are emotionally warm, never cold.)

Commentary