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Wabi – freedom from the distractions of affluence by noticing every priceless moment. |
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Links Still In The Stream - Articles and photos that explore wabi sabi and related subjects
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Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Monday, May 22, 2006
Saturday, May 13, 2006
Saturday, May 06, 2006
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Sunday, April 30, 2006
Friday, April 28, 2006
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Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Thursday, April 07, 2005
Monday, February 28, 2005
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
Thursday, February 03, 2005
Saturday, January 22, 2005
Sunday, January 09, 2005
News Flash: Wabi Sabi Simple Published. Regular readers of Richard Wabi Sabi World will be pleased to know that my long anticipated book, Wabi Sabi Simple released in December and is selling well. The book is a practical and inspiring guide to incorporating the beauty and wisdom of wabi sabi into daily life. For an introduction to the book visit www.stillinthestream.com and the book's description page listed there.
Sunday, December 19, 2004
Friday, November 19, 2004
Sunday, September 19, 2004
Thursday, August 26, 2004
Saturday, August 07, 2004
Thursday, July 22, 2004
Monday, June 21, 2004
Wednesday, June 16, 2004
Monday, May 24, 2004
Thursday, May 06, 2004
Friday, March 19, 2004
Thursday, March 04, 2004
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
Wednesday, February 04, 2004
Thursday, January 29, 2004
Friday, January 23, 2004
Thursday, January 08, 2004
Tuesday, January 06, 2004
Sunday, December 28, 2003
Saturday, December 27, 2003
Thursday, December 11, 2003
Monday, December 01, 2003
Tuesday, November 11, 2003
Sunday, November 02, 2003
Thursday, October 23, 2003
Monday, October 06, 2003
Friday, September 26, 2003
Thursday, September 25, 2003
Tuesday, September 09, 2003
Working Definition: Wabi Sabi is a way of life that appreciates natural beauty, values simplicity, and nurtures an authentic self. It acknowledges that nothing lasts, nothing’s finished, nothing’s perfect, including you, but affirms that contentment is possible when you accept genuine unvarnished existence, with clarity and grace. Friday, August 29, 2003
Wednesday, August 27, 2003
Monday, August 25, 2003
Sunday, August 24, 2003
Friday, August 22, 2003
Monday, August 18, 2003
"Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence."
"When we consider how small after all the cup of human enjoyment is, how soon overflowed with tears, how easily drained to the dregs is our quenchless thirst for infinity, we shall not blame ourselves for making so much of the tea cup." Okakura Kakuzo - The Book of Tea Wednesday, August 13, 2003
Monday, August 11, 2003
Monday, August 04, 2003
Sunday, July 27, 2003
Sunday, July 20, 2003
Saturday, July 12, 2003
Sunday, June 29, 2003
Saturday, June 28, 2003
Wednesday, June 04, 2003
Wednesday, May 21, 2003
Tuesday, May 20, 2003
Saturday, May 03, 2003
That Old Ace in the Hole
Lovers of Wabi Sabi probably already know about Annie Proulx. Her book, The Shipping News, is filled with textured and aged Newfoundland images. Sven Birkerts, writing in the Jan/Feb 2003 issue of Book magazine says of Annie’s new book, “The prose may be slow and demand care from the reader, but Proulx repays our attention with a thousand shocks of charged recognition.” And isn’t that what we all want in a Wabi Sabi novel? Monday, April 28, 2003
Monday, April 07, 2003
In Love with Meaning
prickle of rust set in dust lips as dry as iron rustle of flight inside words out of their mouths birds light of a fire of silence and sound echoes of flames between teeth rains of age on garden throats gargling crops of pain alone on the field of memory hoeing the weed-eating words stone full of water spit full of clay cracker dry speaking feather tongue squeaking words are birds Friday, April 04, 2003
Sunday, March 23, 2003
Monday, March 17, 2003
Saturday, March 15, 2003
Monday, March 10, 2003
Thursday, February 27, 2003
An Unlikely Hero
Fred Rogers died today. I remember being 17 at Matthew Farris’ house listening to a record by a group of comedians that made fun of the Desiderata and Fred Rogers, among other things. For teenage boys the sappy sentiment of Desiderata and the effeminate way that Rogers talked were funny in themselves but the spoofs by the comedians had us reeling with laughter. 20 years later I started to revise my opinion of both. I read the Desiderata with renewed interest, surprised to find that I no longer found it trite and wishy washy but rather melancholy and stoic. I had been watching Fred, too, and found in him now a strange sort of hero. Here was a man who had convictions and education and who quietly implemented a way of relating to children that was radically different, and from all reports, effective. I researched his life and found that he had touched many people profoundly and actually shaped our culture. I am sad that he has died, but glad that he lived and had the courage to be a very different kind of man; the kind of man I hope and pray the world sees more of. Well done Fred! Monday, February 24, 2003
Thursday, February 06, 2003
Friday, January 31, 2003
Thursday, January 30, 2003
Just read that Blogger has over a million people using their service. I guess that makes me one in a million. Wednesday, January 01, 2003
The Art of Humility
My son has a penchant for both humor and self-deprecation. The combination of the two was delightfully exhibited last night while we were playing Balderdash around the kitchen table waiting for the new year to arrive. Graham was in last place and feeling pretty bad about it. He started saying, “I’m the worst, I’m so dumb,” and other negative things. Finally he got up from the table with a sigh and sought solace with the cat who was sitting on the living room floor. Matthew seeing an opportunity to cheer up his brother calculated the last round and artificially inflated Graham’s score. “Look Graham,” he said, moving Graham’s game piece to second place, “Your in second place.” There was a small silence and then we heard from the living room floor Graham’s despondent voice, “Yeah, I’m in second place if everyone is on the same square.” Saturday, December 07, 2002
Friday, November 29, 2002
Sunday, November 24, 2002
Saturday, November 23, 2002
Monday, November 18, 2002
Tuesday, November 12, 2002
Sunday, November 03, 2002
Sunday, October 27, 2002
Friday, September 13, 2002
Heather
Hot September afternoon, I’ve just backed into my parking spot at home, opened the door, and stepped out onto the dusty gravel. I’ve just moved the seat forward and am reaching in the back seat to get my brief case.
Thursday, August 22, 2002
Wednesday, July 10, 2002
Margins What is it about the margins that attract us? Not just the margins of pages but all the margins between the cluttered riotous “where its at” and the mute lonely “no mans land”? Think of the Hebrew prophets in their caves, the early Christian monks erecting huts in the desert, the Tibetan Buddhists in their high mountain cities. We as humans, at least some of us, seek out places where life seems the most hard-done-by. Sure the rainforests are beautiful, cities exciting and fun, but barren places seem to speak to us, or open us to that kind of beauty that comes from hardship. For me it was the alpine meadows of Kokanee Glacier Park. As a young teen I made the journey with my parents and family friends. We all loved the place, its wild rough grass, house size boulders, audacious flowers and miniature trees. We enjoyed the squeaking of the Picas and the calling of the Marmots. Humming birds zoomed around. They seemed much larger in this environment where scale is extreme. Alpine trees take a long time to grow, the alpine growing season is short, and so when the sun is warm every living thing shifts into high gear and the frenzy to store food for the next winter is as earnest as plants and Picas can be. But do I want to live there? I did, for many years, until the hardship of actual survival became less an adventure and more a drudgery. Still the question is valid. What is it about these places, this harsh spare environment, that attracts us? For me it is this: Life keeps trying. There is something fundamental in life that attracts me, and while I know that all life is really just a creative use of an ultimately dwindling energy, still what life does, in the raw and merciless zones of desert and mountain, is make an art out of entropy. And that, for me, is something worth learning. Tuesday, April 30, 2002
Sunday, April 28, 2002
Book Recommendation: Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: Why intelligence Increases When You Think Less by Guy Claxton, published by Fourth Estate. The author explores how business centred cultures that value high productivity and fast analysis, foster active thinking that renders the world as problems and solutions. This is the Hare brain; analyse the problem quickly, prescribe a precise solution. But the actual complexity of life limits the usefulness of conscious, deadline driven ways of thinking. Hare brain solutions and prescriptions work in the short term, sometimes, but often lead to a recurrence of the problem or a manifestation of the problem in other ways. What is really needed is the Tortoise mind. The Tortoise mind involves mulling, reflection, contemplation, gut feelings and intuition. Given time to work these slower processes offer better solutions to complex problems. So why is the Tortoise Brain undervalued? Partly because life is viewed as a race, but also because race-conscious individuals now hold the power and control in society. A more subtle issue has to do with what it means to really understand something. “Knowing emerges from, and is a response to, not-knowing. Learning – the process of coming to know – emerges from uncertainty. Ambivalently, learning seeks to reduce uncertainty, by transmuting the strange into the familiar, but it also needs to tolerate uncertainty, as the seedbed in which ideas germinate and responses form. If either one of these two aspects of learning predominates, then the balance of the mind is disturbed. If passive acceptance of not-knowing overwhelms the active search for meaning and control, then one may fall into fatalism and dependency. While if the need for certainty becomes intemperate, undermining the ability to tolerate confusion, then one may develop a vulnerability to demagoguery and dogma, liable to cling to opinions and beliefs that may not fit the bill, but which do assuage the anxiety.” - From the book. Friday, April 19, 2002
Sunday, April 07, 2002
Goals
Yesterday Marilyn bought “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Reaching Your Goals” by Jeff Davidson at Value Village for $2.99. She says it is the best $2.99 she has ever spent. She showed me the various sections she had highlighted and stopped to read a paragraph on how to sort out wishes from goals. I asked what the different colors of highlighting were for. “I usually highlight in yellow” she said, “but the person who had the book before me used yellow already.” Then she laughed and held up the book to me saying, “Here is where they stopped highlighting.” I looked down at page 66, about ¼ of the way into the book, and observed the last highlighting by the anonymous previous owner. To Sleep Per Chance To Function. It looks like they never got back out of bed, except perhaps, to discard the book in the value village contribution box. I guess setting goals was more of a wish than a goal for that person… Sunday, March 24, 2002
Tea
done cleaning the fish dad’s thermos of steaming tea cup warming my hands dad likes Orange Pekoe says mom’s Earl Grey tea tastes like his childhood hay loft thinking of parents I stand in Overwaitea six long shelves of tea Saturday, March 16, 2002
Unexpectedly Light
I’m downstairs putting wood on the fire. I pet the cat; ask him if he likes the heat from the stove. He yawns and puts a paw on my hand. I put on my sheep skin slippers and head upstairs. Half way up, the light makes me blink. The room is filled with light from the snowstorm outside. The flakes are rolling round and round in little eddies and the sun is backlighting the clouds. Although I know it is cold, must be because the flakes are so light, the brightness makes it seem like the fog in the bathroom after a shower. Now the flakes are going up, the wind drives them across the field and they arch over the house. Fast, at first, and then back to that soft dance. It is pleasure profound to see the wind. Sunday, February 17, 2002
I came across this poem tonight. I have worked on it on and off for over ten years. It belongs here.
Wabi Sabi Our first fall together waxwings ate rain marks as bright as berries what I looked for I still look for stretched out across the cooling lake Our second fall you collected rotten apples behind the grey house stuck out your tongue at them, rinsing your hands quick me and the grass laid down by the rain orange poppy petals silence about them that year we had no friends When we lived on the hill, fall was in the lane I stood, hands in pockets, in a light rain while someone else talked, looked up and saw you in the window, poking floss taut into Aida cloth and the winter white light your hands quick the proper tension Finally we hunched our shoulders a cat put out in the rain while the leaves tumbled cold brown feather caught on Autumn In Victoria winter starlings dappled and hungry clutch thorns with their toes Looking out of the St. George House orange cat in the grass picks its way through the color paws coat steps with silence only eyes quick How many falls now? second pregnancy a two story house In out of the rain, petals under the porch curled dry Slocan river moves as I think about it Finally this year, after seeing smoke from our own chimney I roll my wheelbarrow full of red leaves and two giggling boys and am able to smile knowing this cold flame of joy has a name Sunday, February 03, 2002
Saturday, January 26, 2002
Wabi Cycle
I’m in the truck waiting at the stop sign for the traffic to clear and I see the bicyclist. First thought, “I’ll have to wait for her, too.” Then, as she passes in front of me I see the shopping bags hanging from her handlebars, I glace up at her face. She is sitting straight peddling with strong strokes, wearing a safety vest with the luminous reflective X on front and back. She has the serene and slightly amused look of someone enjoying a thought. And then she is past and the traffic clears and I head out into the street and I think, “Good on you!”
Monday, January 14, 2002
Stumbling into Wabi Sabi
Such Joy! I got a new book from the library today that I had called for and I started reading it tonight after vacuuming and tidying up. Page 12: “There are two fundamental principles which permeate Chinese and Japanese art and culture: The concepts of “wabi” and “sabi.” Wow, fundamental principles, that’s big! The author goes on to explain: “Wabi means, quite literally, ‘poverty,’ although this translation does not begin to convey the richness of its true meaning. Poverty, in this sense, means not being dependent on material possessions, rather than simply not having them. A person who is poor in these terms can still be inwardly rich because of the presence of something of higher value than mere possessions. Wabi, therefore, is poverty that surpasses immense riches. In practical terms, wabi is exemplified in the contentment of a family living in very Spartan conditions with simple food and few possessions, but surrounded by and in tune with the events of everyday life. In intellectual and artistic terms, wabi is found in the person who does not indulge in complexity of concept, over-ornate expression, or the pomposity of self-esteem. He, or she is quietly content with the simple things in life, which are the sources of their everyday inspiration.” “Sabi, on the other hand, denotes ‘loneliness’ or ‘solitude’, although in aesthetic terms, its meaning is much broader. An antique element is also implied, especially if it is combined with a primitive lack of sophistication. The utensils used in the traditional tea ceremony of Japan are a good example of sabi. The essence of sabi, therefore, is gracefulness combined with antiquity.” “In addition to wabi and sabi, there are seven other characteristics which are regarded as expressive of Zen in a work of art, and which link the concepts of Wabi and Sabi. These are: asymmetry, simplicity, austere sublimity, naturalness, subtle profundity, freedom from attachment, and tranquility.” Cool. I love this stuff. And it is like this big thing! How come I haven’t heard of it before? I’ve lived on the planet over 40 years and only heard about this idea several months ago. It is introverted, stoic, but balanced and serene. It is where I want to be. Is this what happens when you get older? The question now is, how to accomplish it without getting severe and aloof. Perhaps the Bonsai will help me find that way. (The book I refer to is: Bonsai Masterclass by Peter Chan)
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