Wabi Sabi: The Japanese Art of Impermanence

a sense of desolation, employing such visual images as reeds that had been withered by frost. This pattern of use increased, as did the spirit of utter loneliness and finality implied by the term, and it went hand in hand with the Buddhist view on the existential transience of life known as mujo. The concept of mujo, taken from the Sanskrit anitya

A life of poverty was the Zen ideal for a monk seeking the ultimate truth of reality, and so from these negative images came the poetic ideal of a man who has transcended the need for the comforts of the physical world and has managed to find peace and harmony in the simplest of lives.

With his Zen sense of restraint he pushed the focus of the tea ceremony away from ostentatious shows of wealth and toward the spiritual communion of two or more people who, in a state of calm and controlled abandon, could meditate on the beauty and transience of life. Although Sen no Rikyu is often credited with being the father of the tea ceremony

Music has been described as the spaces between the notes, and in art, too, the areas that are not actually used can be just as important as those that are.

Sen no Rikyu’s eye for aesthetic balance and his predilection for the simple and unadorned helped to change the focus of the tea ceremony from a display of culture and wealth to a communion of kindred spirits seeking purity and truth.

Design criteria: No embellishment or ostentation Unrefined and raw Use of freely available materials

The original exponents of wabi sabi advocated the use of materials that occur naturally—mud, clay, wood, bamboo, cloth, paper, hemp, grass, and even iron.

he also spent many years as a Zen monk in the temple of Daitokuji in Kyoto,

from the simple lifestyles of the monks who lived a life of wabi, referred to as wabizumai. ( Wabi here means solitary and simple and zumai being a verb extension meaning to live.)