Wabi Sabi: The Japanese Art of Impermanence

The fusion of Taoism with Buddhist ideas is thought to have been inspired by the arrival of the eccentric monk known as the Bodhidharma (referred to as the Daruma in Japan).

Little has been done in Europe with ash glazes, but in Japan the ash glaze has been a predominant feature of pottery since its use was first discovered in the Nara period. The desire for a nonuniform surface that can catch, in the glaze of each pot, the irregularities of nature hails back to the Japanese love of things that are imperfect and incomp

The Zen monks used the arts as a vehicle for the serious business of communicating their understanding of life to their fellowmen, but within their work there was also humor, satire, and an exquisite sense of beauty.

he would then make a theme for the machia, or meeting, so that the event is held together by the glue of consistency.

It offers an aesthetic ideal that uses the uncompromising touch of mortality to focus the mind on the exquisite transient beauty to be found in all things impermanent. It can be found in the arrangement of a single flower, the expression of profound emotion in three lines of poetry, or in the perception of a mountain landscape in a single rock.

In reality there is nothing in the universe which is completely perfect or completely still; it is only in the minds of men that such concepts exist.” —Alan Watts

Dogen founded the Soto sect of Zen Buddhism in 1227 after experiencing enlightenment in the Chinese monastery on Mount Tiantong in 1225. On returning to Japan,

Wabi sabi embodies the Zen nihilist cosmic view and seeks beauty in the imperfections found as all things, in a constant state of flux, evolve from nothing and devolve back to nothing.

Wabi sabi, as a product of the Zen mind, can find its earliest roots in Zen’s forerunner, Taoism, and we will explore in these pages its development from its first inklings in China to the cultural icon that it became in Japan.