WHY WABI SABI?
If you put your ear to society, you will hear the rumblings of a slow revolution, a yearning for a simpler, more meaningful life.
A life infused with beauty, connected to nature, thrumming with the energy of everyday wellbeing, and built around what really matters to us.
Living a more authentic and inspired life!
Wabi sabiis an intuitive response to beauty that reflects the true nature of life.
Wabi sabiis an acceptance and appreciation of the impermanent, imperfect and incomplete nature of everything.
Wabi sabiis a recognition of the gifts of simple, slow and natural living.
The secret ofwabi sabilies in seeing the world not with the logical mind but through the heart.
Wabiis about finding beauty in simplicity, and a spiritual richness and serenity in detaching from the material world.
Sabiis more concerned with the passage of time, with the way that all things grow and decay and how ageing alters the visual nature of those things.
As an aesthetic term, the beauty ofwabiis in its underlying tone of darkness. It is sublime beauty in among the harsh realities of life. As Buddhist priest Kenko wrote, seven centuries ago,
“Should we look at the Spring blossoms only in full flower, or the moon only when cloudless and clear?”
Beauty is not only evident in the joyous, the loud or the obvious.
Wabiimplies a stillness, with an air rising above the mundane. It is an acceptance of reality, and the insight that comes with that. It allows us to realise that whatever our situation, there is beauty hiding somewhere.
Wabican describe the feeling generated by recognising the beauty found in simplicity. It is a sense of quiet contentment found away from the trappings of the materialistic world.
Ultimately,wabiis a mindset that appreciates humility, simplicity and frugality as routes to tranquillity and contentment. The spirit ofwabiis deeply connected to the idea that accepting that our true needs are simple, and of being humble and grateful for the beauty that already exists right where we are.
‘Wabi sabi is naturalness; it’s about things in their natural, most authentic state. That’s all!’
Zen Monk
Kojien is the Japanese equivalent of the dictionary and simply states ‘Things as they are.’
THE JAPANESE LOVE OF NATURE
Wabi sabi is an intuitive response to beauty which reflects the true nature of things as they are. That is a beauty that reminds us that everything is impermanent, imperfect & incomplete.
It reminds us that we part of something miraculous!
The forest does not care what your hair looks like. The mountains don’t move for any job title. The rivers keep running, regardless of your social media following, your salary or your popularity. The flowers keep on blooming, whether or not you make mistakes. Nature just is, and welcomes you, just as you are.
Our capacity to experiencewabi sabireconnects us to these truths, which allow us to feel, in the moment, unconditionally accepted.
Japanese nature writing does not just emphasise a sense of place but also, crucially, a sense of time.
(The I.P.O.S foundations of ‘Best Sites and Best Growers’ creating provenance combined with timing of work in vineyard and timing of picking… all in sync and contributing to the best fruit we can produce)
Observations of impermanence expressed in two ways – through the absence of something that was but is no longer, and through the notion of transience, in the sense that something is but will soon no longer be.
There are beautiful words for particular happenings in nature, such askomorebi,which describes sunlight filtering through the trees, dappling the earth below.
Seasonal words are used in poetry, letters and emails with season-specific greetings.
The most beautiful thing about notes that open in this way is their power to reveal a momentary window in the writer’s life, through the details of the seasons they are experiencing at the time. In a few lines, they can transport you to the warmth of a patch of sunlight filtering through the vines, the ochre and lustre of autumn leaves as they fall from the vines, or the fleck & warmth of an open fire on a cold winter’s day.
THE RHYTHM OF THE SEASONS
Creating our own seasonal traditions can be a wonderful way to honour the rhythms of nature, and notice the passage of time in our own lives.
THEWABI SABICONNECTION
So how does all this connect towabi sabi? In a subtle, beautiful,komorebi-sunshine-filtering-through-the-leaves-kind-of-way.
Each ray of natural inspiration is a reminder to notice and appreciate what is here now, in all its ephemeral beauty.
If you visit Japan you will soon realise the four main seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter are woven into the fabric of everyday life: spring brings cherry blossom andhanami(flower viewing) parties, summer offers festivals andkimono-clas strolls along the river in search of fireflies; autumn welcomes moon viewing and momiji(maple) leaves, especially memorable when lit up at night; and winter ushers in the quiet beauty of snow. There is evidence of the seasons in the tiniest of details, from food to decoration, from clothing to festivals.
You could suspect the importance of these observances, the rituals and traditions and the thousands of tiny reminders in daily life, are the reason thatwabi sabiis so deeply embedded in the hearts of Japanese people.
MARKING TIME
Japanese people have paid close attention to the seasons since ancient times. According to the classical Japanese calendar, there are in fact twenty-four small seasons known assekkieach lasting around 15 days, and seventy two microseasons known asko, each lasting around five days.
The calendar was originally adopted from China in AD862 and eventually reformed to suit the local climate (particularly around Kyoto) in 1684.
Each of these sub-seasons and microseasons has a name, which paints an evocative picture of what is going on in the natural world at that particular time.
