The Lessons of Wabi-Sabi

I first learned of wabi-sabi during my youthful spiritual quest in the late 1960s. At that time, the traditional culture of Japan beckoned with profound “answers” to life’s toughest questions. Wabi-sabi seemed to me a nature-based aesthetic paradigm that restored a measure of sanity and proportion to the art of living. Deep, multidimensional, elusive, wabi-sabi appeared to be the perfect antidote to the pervasively slick, saccharine, corporate style of beauty that I felt was desensitizing American society. I have since come to believe that wabi-sabi is related to many of the more emphatic anti-aesthetic movements that invariably spring from the young, modern, creative soul: beat, punk, grunge, or whatever it’s called next.

Wabi-sabi also springs from nature. The Japanese, like other cultures, have tried to control nature as best they could. But there was little they could do about the weather, the earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, typhoons, floods, fires, and tidal waves that periodically and unpredictably visited their land. The Japanese didn’t particularly trust nature, but they learned from it. Some of the most compelling lessons (leavened with Taoist thought) were incorporated into the wisdom of wabi-sabi.

All things are impermanent. Even things that have all the earmarks of substance—things that are hard, inert, solid—present nothing more than the illusion of permanence. All comes to nothing in the end. Everything wears down. The planets and stars, and even intangible things like reputation, family heritage, historical memory, scientific theorems, mathematical proofs, great art and literature (even in digital form)—all eventually fade into oblivion.

All things are imperfect. Nothing that exists is without imperfections. When we look closely at things, we see the flaws. The sharp edge of a razor blade, when it is magnified, reveals pits, chips, and variegations. And as things begin to break down and approach the primordial state, they become even less perfect, more irregular, and perhaps more lovely.