Wabi-Sabi

The Art of Repair: Finding Beauty in Imperfection

Photo by AllysherLow on Unsplash

Join me in thanking Chris Pratt for sharing his exquisite writing with us. Chris’s words will nourish us for years to come. He is a true poet of life and we are grateful for his contributions and eagerly anticipate his future insights as we become co-creators with nature, deepening our understanding of the universe and ourselves.

Wabi-Sabi, Ticky-Tacky, Honky-Tonk,  Jerry-Rig, Fiddle-Faddle.  Two words that brought together to create a hybrid word that encompasses and transcends the meaning each stand-alone word.

Wabi-Sabi is a Japanese word pair that defies translation.  The literal translation and original meaning of of Wabi is the feeling of being alone in Nature and Sabi originally would have translated into old and wizen or rusted.  What is interesting is that these two negative concepts of being alone and old should come together and take on a new more positive meaning as the Japanese culture itself aged.  Today Wabi-Sabi means beautiful imperfection, artistic repair, natural, well-aged, timeless, a way of life and a paradox, among many other things. It defies definition by being intentionally ambiguous and therefore infinitely adaptable and open-ended.

Wabi-sabi is semi-synonymous with Jerry-rigging, that very American word that reflects our need to cobble things together from whatever is lying around to make it work again.  Like our culture it is less artful and more resourceful than the old world.  What do you expect, we came of age in a vast wilderness that was tamed by an industrial revolution that could make things work and get a job done.  Japan’s mature culture would naturally value an artistic, refined and studied repair of sacred, soul-full object steeped in history and spiritual meaning.

One of many definitions that can be applied to wabi -sabi is how the elements of nature work on our built objects after we are finished.  How time, water, sun and organisms connect with it and improve its beauty.   If the object is well built and in the spirit of nature it will harmonize and improve with age.  The meaning of the word Wabi-Sabi has also improved with time going, from a negative thing to one of the most sublime qualities we can imagine.  The two separate words come together to make something greater than the sum of its parts, they complete each other the way humans and nature can work together to complete each other.   Imagine Wabi as the object we create and Sabi as natures hand, or visa-versa, fiddle-faddle it weaves in and out.

Some of our creations harmonize especially well with nature, cedar shingles on the coast that weather to a  soft uniform grey in the salt air, pine boards and milk paint that weather into exquisitely textured barn boards are works of art,  stone walls covered with moss and lichens, copper that turns green,  and brick covered in ivy or soft green lines of moss between the hard red bricks of an old patio.   When we appreciate natures work, we become co-creators and deepen our understanding of the universe.  Then there are the things nature cannot harmonize with or digest into anything useful.   Vinyl siding, old cars, appliances, plastic tarps, or anything plastic I am afraid.  I have heard that plastic garbage has morphed into some pretty bizarre rock formations on this one particular island, but that is still a work in progress.

One of the ways we co-create with nature is through repair.  All objects have an Achilles heel.  A weak point, a flaw or place where the elements over power the object with sun, water and organism.  When are working in wood it is called rot.  Wabi-sabi is often used to describe a repair that that honors the good work of nature and our own ability to make the flaw a strength.  This is our way and natures way.  A broken bone will heal and become stronger at the break than the original bone.   We say, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, and the crack in a broken heart is where the light comes in.  The repair brings together the wabi-sabi and makes it special.  Image in a world of only wabis or just sabis, a world before the pair became a great duo, or maybe they were always together and in Japan they got re-paired.  Not hard to see that what connects repairing objects and repairing spirits is much more than just a metaphor.    I leave you with this, an excerpt from the Dedication of Merit and the end of the Recovery Dharma Book.

We hope that the pain of addiction, trauma, and feeling “apart” actually leads us back toward the heart and that we might understand compassion, wisdom, and change ever more deeply. As we have learned from practice, great pain does not erase goodness, but in fact informs it.