Wabi Sabi

Finding beauty in life's imperfections

- Smt. Sujatha Rao

Come spring and the entire world goes gaga over the beauty of the cherry blossoms (known as 'Sakura' flowers in Japanese) season in Japan. At the centre of it all is the beauty of the cherry blossoms themselves, as they explode over treetops and canopies in swaths of pink and white holding the entire world in their enthral.

In Japan, people celebrate every cherry blossoms season taking out time for 'Hamami' which translates to 'flower viewing.' The Hamami is usually followed by a picnic or barbecue with traditional Japanese food.

Cherry blossoms became so very popular not only for their beauty, but also because they are so very short lived. These flowers last only for about two weeks. As the flowers wilt and the petals fall and line the streets of Japan with a layer of light pink snow, they remind one of the transitions from life to death.

Thus the cherry blossoms' aesthetic appeal is also because of their fragility and inherent brevity of life, heightening the event's stunning, albeit a bit melancholic nature.

Understanding and admiring such mercurial beauty makes us accept the impermanence of life so that we appreciate those fleeting moments of joy with a greater sense of importance. We learn to accept change as a natural order of things, rather than craving for the same to last forever.

This brings us to the Japanese concept of 'Wabi Sabi' (pronounced wah-bi sah-bi), rooted in Zen Buddhism that calls for seeing beauty in imperfection while accepting the natural cycle of life, where nothing is impervious to decay.

When they stand separately, Wabi Sabi are two individual concepts as follows: