Wabi-sabi is a Japanese worldview based on the first of the Buddhist Three Marks of Existence: all things are impermanent.

Wabi-sabi is a notoriously difficult concept to grasp, and is said to have no exact English equivalent. For that matter, a perfect definition might be antithetical to the concept itself.

But we can get pretty close to a working definition:

wabi means simple, humble, natural

means simple, humble, natural sabi means to tarnish, or to grow old.

Together they mean the appreciation of natural growth and decay.

Emergence of wabi-sabi

Wabi-sabi emerged in the 15th Century as a philosophical response to a culture of opulence that engulfed the traditional Japanese custom of the tea ceremony. At a time when the tea ceremony had come to mean extravagant locales and exotic wares, some practitioners began to opt for humbler trappings. They favored small tea houses, local utensils, and eschewed gilded robes in favor of well-worn ones.

This represented a cultural shift away from conspicuous wealth and towards a reverence of the earthen, and all the imperfection and asymmetry therein.

When we open ourselves to the passing of time and irregularity of nature, we open ourselves to the feeling of serene melancholy.

Wabi-sabi evokes serene melancholy

Serene melancholy is an example of a blended emotion, or an emotional experience in which you feel more than one emotion at once. In a society where we all just want to be happy, the idea of aspiring to melancholia — whatever it might be paired with — might not sound very appealing.

But the fact is that we only have four basic emotions — mad, sad, glad, and afraid — and we can expect to feel each of them to some degree, most of the time. The aspiration towards serene melancholy is not masochism, it’s realism.

Take a look at the picture of weathered statue at the top of this page. While pieces may have broken off with time or succumbed to overgrowth, its finer details blunted by rain and wind, we still recognize the beauty of the original vision. The image visually serenades us, while its signs of age remind us that if beauty is attainable, it is only attainable in passing. This experience — awe tinged with sadness — is wabi-sabi.

Wabi-sabi can also be present in more personal ways. You may feel serene melancholy when you visit your barely-recognizable hometown, thumb through an old yearbook, or visit an aging relative. These reminders of good times and loved ones bring us joy, while also reminding us the world continues to change.

So, wabi-sabi makes us nostalgic, then?

When wabi-sabi relates to our personal experiences, it can on the surface appear to resemble nostalgia, or a sentimentality towards the past. While they do share common ground –a recognition of change, a longing for the past — they are in fact very different.

Nostalgia is narrower in scope. It typically relates to our personal experiences with the past and the emotions these memories evoke.

While wabi-sabi can relate to our own experiences, it can just as easily relate to something we have no prior experience with. Wabi-sabi, unlike nostalgia, does not require a memory bank.

The most important difference between the two, perhaps, is that nostalgia comes from an idealization of the past, while wabi-sabi is firmly rooted in the present. To feel nostalgic, one must draw on a comparison between the past and present; One doesn’t need an understanding of the past to feel serene melancholy about the changes one witnesses in the present.

Wabi-Sabi and the American mind

Americans, generally speaking, despise decay in all of its many forms. We just can’t stand it!

Our American Dream almost always includes an immaculate lawn — that radiant, uniformly green, geometrically harmonious declaration of one’s mastery over nature.

The American Lawn is a status symbol: the undeniable proof that the overseer of the ground has conquered his environment and imposed an artificial symmetry onto it.

Wabi-sabi, then, is the dreaded next door neighbor’s lawn that looks like a jungle: unkempt, untamed, unadulterated nature. Disgusting, right?

Even more emotionally charged are our feelings about the decay of our bodies. Wrinkles, receding hairlines, receding gums — we don’t just see them in the mirror, we see them in our nightmares. And we spend billions trying to make it all just go away.

We’re chasing perfectionism in a world where imperfection is the natural order.

The perils of perfectionism

If a statue made of stone can’t keep itself together, then what hope do our fleshy selves have?

The downsides of perfectionism are becoming increasingly understood. Impossibly high standards are a playground for anxiety and depression. Perfectionism is, in part, a refusal to accept that all things are in a constant state of change. For the perfectionist, every new wrinkle or graying hair is a belligerent that must be swiftly dealt with, and whether the perfectionist cares to admit it or not, he or she is losing the battle no matter how many resources he has allocated to the cause.

Now, imagine how much nicer life would be if every new grey hair actually promoted well-being? That is the power of serene melancholy.

A philosophy, not a fashion

Wabi-sabi has made inroads to American culture, though a lot has been lost in translation. In the decorative arts, it has become popular as shorthand for ‘rustic’ or, simply, beat-up. But wabi-sabi is not a decorative style; it is a philosophy.

As such, you don’t need to go anywhere in particular or buy anything special to cultivate wabi-sabi.

Why wabi-sabi is worth cultivating

Serene melancholy is a complex emotion, and you may question whether you even want to feel that way. After all, how can melancholy be good?

Certainly, the cultivation of wabi-sabi might seem like a more dubious goal than the simple and straightforward Pursuit of Happiness.

But life is not simple and straightforward; life is complex, and avoiding negative emotions can be bad for us. Social science is finally catching up to what proponents of wabi-sabi have known for centuries: unpleasant emotions like sadness — in moderate doses — are an important part of a fulfilling life.

Embrace complexity for well-being

Psychologists Jonathan Adler and Hal Hershield found in a recent study:

“[T]aking the good and the bad together may detoxify the bad experiences, allowing you to make meaning out of them in a way that supports psychological well-being.”

In other words, acknowledging the bad can actually make us feel better, so long as we acknowledge the good, too. The Pursuit of Happiness, then, is not only unrealistically one-dimensional — it isn’t even that helpful.

Sometimes, a dogged pursuit of good feelings can lead one to get trapped on the hedonic treadmill, or the cyclical striving after external benchmarks in search of short-but-fleeting bursts of happiness; Other times, the suppressing of unpleasant emotions can lead to misguided attempts at masking them, such as drug and alcohol abuse.

Who knew simplicity could be so dangerous?

Your perception, your choice

Just as a damaged statue or a sun spot on one’s hand can promote anxiety, anger, or depression, it can also promote serene melancholy. They emotions you feel are largely determined by your thoughts and beliefs about change.

If you make a conscious effort to accept change, and, by extension, impermanence, then you are much more likely to experience the beauty of serene melancholy than the more difficult emotions that can be provoked by a resistance to change, namely anger and fear. Aspiring towards wabi-sabi can make the short jaunt through life much richer.

References:

Juniper, Andrew (2003). Wabi Sabi: The Japanese Art of Impermanence . Tuttle Publishing.

. Tuttle Publishing. Koren, Leonard (1994). Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers. Stone Bridge Press

Photo credit:

All photographs licensed under Creative Commons zero.

Learn more

Subscribe to the monthly newsletter to receive summaries of new articles.

Articles

Feeling Bad Isn’t Always Bad

Mindfulness Meditation: Choosing Your Train of Thought

Raw Emotions Can Help To Create Meaning

Stoicism and CBT: Is Therapy a Philosophical Pursuit?