Wabi Sabi: The Japanese Art of Impermanence

The quality of any piece of art is said to be decided before the pen or brush has been lifted, for it lies within each person, and the art that is produced is only as good as the spirit of the artist at the time it is made. The links between wabi sabi and Zen exist because the monks were well aware that artistic expression is a carbon copy of the a

If an object or expression can bring about, within us, a sense of serene melancholy and a spiritual longing, then that object could be said to be wabi sabi.

His most celebrated poem is: Furu ike ya! Kawazu tobikomu Mizu no oto The old pond A frog jumps in The sound of water As with most haiku, the images are taken from the small details found in nature and then the imagery is used to paint a thousand pictures and convey sentiments that elude verbal definition.

the Japanese seek to harness the emotive effect of death to add force and power to their actions. With this force also comes a sense of inconsolable desolation, and it is this feeling to which the term sabi is often applied.

the ishitateso, “the monks who place stones,”

As Albert Camus said, “Man is a creature who spends his entire life trying to convince himself that his existence is not absurd.”

The old flagstones found in English cottages are a perfect example of how the uneven worn surface of the stones can complement an interior.

The beauty of Basho’s prose, however, took the negative aspects of old age, loneliness, and death and imbued them with a serene sense of beauty.

There was even, at one point, a narrowly defeated vote on whether the Japanese should keep their own language or switch to English. Fortunately, the language was kept, and it has continued to function as a link between the past and the present.

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).