I just read a 200-page book by Leonard Koren on how to live simply. It is far too long. It gives me advice on how to furnish my home, how to cook, deal with my leisure time, cope with my working hours, and improve relationships - all in a wabi-sabi way. It is wonderfully written and inspirational yet, as most “advice” books, it has left me bewildered, overwhelmed and, as usual, full of guilt at my excesses. It also leaves me wondering where I should begin in order to pare my life down, and how I could bring my day-to-day existence closer to wabi-sabi ideals.

Japanese in origin, “wabi” and “sabi” are difficult terms to translate. Wabi suggests poverty, but only in the sense of not being in style, not being in fashion. Wabi has nothing to do with grinding poverty where basic needs are not met. It speaks of the poverty where desires for fame, fortune and power have dropped away, and yet people can still feel they are creatures of some value. A wabi life is not one of brilliant intellect or dazzling charisma. It is one led in rhythm with the seasons, surrounded by reasonable necessities. It is a life where the senses predominate - the enjoyment of the first uncurling ferns in spring, the fulfillment of flowers in summer, the necessary decay of autumn and the silence of winter.

“Sabi” actually means “rusty” and it suggests unpretentiousness, loneliness, and solitude. Not isolation in the negative sense, but in the sense that one is content to stay with oneself. In objects, it implies integrity in their making so the object’s use is fulfilled without frills. Professor David Young defines these terms nicely when he states, “Wabi refers to that which is humble, simple, normal and healthy, while sabi refers to elegant detachment and the rustic maturity that comes to something as it grows old.”

“Rustic maturity” sounds like something I would like to acquire. So, there we have a beginning: the goal of shaving away our excesses so both our lives and the environment around us flourish in the most wholesome way.

As we age, life does the simplifying for us, as our horizons grow closer and our needs drop away. However, having devoted a couple of days to reading the wabi-sabi book (and at 80, two days are precious), I feel I need to speed the process of simplifying my life up a bit, and maybe help you simplify yours at the same time by exploring the wabi-sabi process a little more deeply.
 
Certainly downsizing, as children leave home or for economic reasons, is a move in the right direction towards simple living. So are garage sales of surplus stuff you have been carrying around with you far too long. Eating wholesome foods in season and from local sources, mending favourite clothes instead of throwing them away, using quilts made from family’s cast-off clothing are all good things to do. And, if you have to buy instead of recycling, a wabi-sabi lifestyle suggests you buy quality instead of novelty. All these actions are good. However, I’m sure you will have sensed by now that a wabi-sabi lifestyle starts from changes within the person rather than from outside activities. It begins with a dropping away of worldly conditions such as the need for novelty, the need to be with the “in” people at the “in” places.

Ambition

To reach an age when things
fall away unneeded,
as spent petals on a flower,
as Fall leaves from the tree,
as skins of summer snakes.
When Socrates passed the market-stalls
he noted, “What a lot
of things I don’t need.”
Ah! That’s what I mean.

Of course, we don’t have to be old to live a simple life. Simple living implies integrity. A life where nothing needs to be added, a life pared of un-essentials. Such a life does not lack aesthetics though - a crockery pot full of well-worn kitchen spoons, a wooden bowl burnished by years of handling, a dish of interesting seed pods gathered in the fall, a simple line drawing of a favourite tree all have the essence of wabi-sabi. Be warned though, that handcrafted does not automatically equate integrity, nor that you must have it in your life.

A wabi-sabi life is one which is hard to define, yet somehow easy to recognize. It has authenticity - no manipulation, no posing for effects, no seeking to please others, no ambitions. I suppose it is paradoxical that a wabi-sabi life actually involves no trying, no self-conscious efforts at all; at the same time, one has to be conscious of the unnecessary elements in one’s day-to-day existence and act to remove them.

Living a simple life, one’s pace slows down so everyday moments are significant. Significant because we know they will pass, for nothing can be grasped and held forever. Success in such a life comes from the inner satisfaction that you are fulfilling your talents, whether they are large on the world stage, or small and local, and that your life is in tune with the cycles of day and night and the seasons.

My small square

My life is like a small square
that I choose to live within.
Outside is no more evil
than inside, for, being
human, all qualities, good
or bad, are to be found in
this skin/flesh/bone bag of nonsense,
albeit drawn modest.
Inside my boundaries,
I write of spiders scattering
from a clothespin bag and
the unsuspected autumn crocus
purpling the ground -
petty things, yet, within
my small square, they
fill to the corners.

Koren defines wabi-sabi in this way, “it refers to the delicate balance between the pleasure we get from things and the pleasure we get from the freedom from things.” So, though I sighed when I closed that book of immense advice on how to make my life more wabi-sabi, I have a kind of feeling that I would like to be closer to that way of life; that that lifestyle would make my remaining years both fruitful and honest. I also have the feeling that it would be beneficial for the whole world if we all moved towards that goal.

FEBRUARY 2012 SENIOR LIVING MAGAZINE VANCOUVER ISLAND