Wabi

[Kristopher]

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Here we have an appreciation of transcendental aloofness in the midst of multiplicities – which is know as wabi in the dictionary of Japanese cultural terms. Wabi really means “poverty,” or, negatively, “not to be in the fashionable society of the time.”

To be poor, that is, not to be dependent on things worldly – wealth, power, and reputation – and yet to feel inwardly the presence of something of the highest value, above time and social position: This is what essentially constitutes wabi.

Stated in terms of practical everyday life, wabi is to be satisfied with a little hut, a room or two or three tatami (mats), like the log cabin of Thoreau, and with a dish of vegetables picked in the neighboring fields, and perhaps to be listening to the patterning of a gentle spring rainfall.

Despite the modern Western luxuries and comforts of life which have invaded us, there is still an ineradicable longing in us for wabi. Even in the intellectual life, not richness of ideas, not brilliancy or solemnity in marshaling thoughts and building up a philosophical system is sought; but just to stay quietly content with the mystical contemplation of Nature and to feel at home with the world is more inspiring to us, at least to some of us.

However “civilized,” however much brought up in an artificially contrived environment, we all seem to have an innate longing for primitive simplicity, close to the natural state of living. We wish to go back once in a while to the bosom of Nature and feel her pulsation directly.

Zen’s habit of no mind, to break through all forms of human artificiality and take firm hold of what lies behind them, has helped many not to forget the soil but to be always friendly with Nature and appreciate her unaffected simplicity.

Zen has no taste for complexities that lie on the surface of life. Life itself is simple enough, but when it is surveyed by the analyzing intellect it presents unparalleled intricacies. With all the apparatus of science we have not yet fathomed the mysteries of life. But, once in its current, we seem to be able to understand it, with its apparently endless pluralities and entanglements.

Let us reside in wabi, the ability to grasp life from within and not from without. And Zen has struck it.