Recently, I came across Leonard Koren’s book, “Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers.” I found both the term wabi-sabi and the philosophical concepts it embodies irresistible. Here is my imperfect description of this hard-to-define Japanese concept.
In the distant past, the words wabi and sabi had distinct meanings; both referred to qualities engendered by the isolation and poverty in which the early monks lived. Originally, wabi meant sad, lonely and desolate, while sabireferred…