Wabi-Sabi – accepting the world as imperfect, unfinished, and transient, and then going deeper and celebrating that reality…
Centuries back, in the height of the Japanese autumn, in one of Kyoto’s majestic gardens, a tea master asked his disciple to prepare for tea ceremony. The young man trimmed the hedges, raked the gravel, picked the dried leaves from the stones, cleared the moss path of twigs. The garden looked immaculate: not a blade of grass out of place. The master inspected the garden quietly. Then, he reached at a branch of a maple tree and shook it, watching the auburn leaves fall with haphazard grace on tidied earth. There it was now, the magic of imperfection. There it was, the order of nature, never far from the hands of humans. There it was, wabi-sabi, thought master Rikyu – the father of Japanese tea ceremony… read more at theuppers.com
HOW TO APPLY IT IN A REAL LIFE?
Relationships…
When the samurai entered a teahouse, they removed their swords, leaving behind their conflicts and pretensions. Similarly, Powell says, a wabi sabi relationship is one in which you deliberately accept each other where you are — imperfect, unfinished, and mortal.
Accepting someone else’s faults, rather than taking them on as a project to be fixed, leaves you the time and emotional energy for enjoying that person.
Food…
“Wabi sabi principles suggest our food should be natural, simple, and prepared from intuition,” Brown says. Making a meal should be a creative, joyful act, not a test you can fail.
That means improvising with a recipe when you have basil but not tarragon; reveling in the textures of a homemade dish… It’s about savoring your food. Don’t just taste flavors but inhale the richness of smells, hear the sounds your food makes, feel the textures (wet, chewy, crunchy) in your mouth. “
Home…
A wabi sabi home is full of rustic character, charm, and things that are uniquely yours… If an old chest has significance to you, for example, a missing drawer pull doesn’t have to be an eyesore. It can also be a sign that the piece has been used and enjoyed.
Think about a color palette that mimics what’s found in nature: greens, grays, earth tones, and rusts. This creates an atmosphere of tranquillity and harmony. Every object in your home should be beautiful, useful, or both.
Beauty…
Yes, the beauty of youth is almost universally revered. But in wabi sabi, as in life itself, change is the only constant. “The starting point of cultivating a wabi sabi beauty is to appreciate the process of aging; Try not to get caught up in wanting to stagnate in one part of your natural progression through life.”
Wabi sabi beauty is not about relinquishing self-care, which can be a form of attention and presence in your life. The Japanese tea masters took exquisite care of their pottery, cracked and imperfect as it was. Likewise, you can pamper your body without nipping and tucking it into submission.
When you shine through, that’s beautiful…
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