Chawan lover #3 : wabi-sabi and ceramic meditation

A ceramic meditation

A Chôjiro style tea bowl from Shôraku workshop.

Nothing is more still that burnt clay.  But the light keeps dancing on ceramics with an astonishing refinement. And very often, the most imperfect and simple pieces are the most playful with their environnement. Sometimes, I think that this specific relationship with environnement is one of the roots of the wabi-sabi aesthetic : it creates what I call a welcoming nature.

Arts and their nature

Frame itself separates the art from our world

Most of the western (but also eastern) arts exhibit a strong human presence. The art is somehow remarkable, a human intention separates it from anything that could be called ‘natural’. The vivid colors, the geometrical lines, any pattern or drawing that could be described as more or less realist — which, in fine, means that it creates its own reality — all of these are different ways to distinguish the « human » world made by art from the « primal » world.

Descartes said that we should become « master and possessor of nature ».  In that case, nature itself is not from our world and we are not natural beings. Some centuries after that, Hegel thought that nature was the eternal « Other », the what-has-not-yet-been-made-mine. He even said that culture was like a « second nature » that each of us had to assimilate. In some way, nothing is more true. Nature, or very own nature, is a strange thing inside of us that we have to apprehend, adopt and make ours.

But, quite obviously, todays production is scarcely hegelian. Too often, it is based on a principle of separating from the environnement. It is the case for so many « designed » items today that, even if they look beautiful by themselves or in a set up, have no position in any decent living room. They are not from this world — rather, they are from their set up world. At least, they draw attention, because what does not seem natural is still, to this day, a curious thing.

 Wabi-sabi as an environnemental art

In Japan and, sporadically, everywhere in the world, a radically different artistic world has been growing next to this « human-based » art. Sometimes, this other form of art can be described as wabi-sabi. What matters here is not to master the natural elements but to channel them to make this world livable. I tend to think that, in a tea house, the natural environnement did not stay outside. The tatami straw smell, the bark on the central pilar, the tranquil smoke that rises from the coal and the flower beholding us from the alcove : these are as many ways to reconciliate ourselves with the forest nearby. It is not the exstasy, nor the intellect, nor the feat, that this form of art is seeking : it is quietness. In this place, devoid of any danger, where even the samurais enter with no sword, it is finally possible to meditate in pure serenity.

The tea bowls made by Chôjiro, founding father of what will one day become the Raku Family, are considered today to be the epitome of such aesthetic. A great art critic once wrote about one of Chôjiro’s tea bowls that it was « beyond such antithetical concepts such as artless and intentional. » In Chôjiro’s tea bowls, there is no trace of the master’s hand nor any obvious research of bareness. The bowl seem to exist with a baffling simplicity, like a rock or a leaf can exist. That it was man-made is almost unimportant. In a « zen » language, one could say that it is an ego-less tea bowl or, more accurately, that this tea bowl is « in its rightful place ».

Meditative bowl

At Shôraku, the potters try to reproduce the same spirit — or, rather, this lack of any spirit. This imitation of Chôjiro’s tea bowl follows that line with its ashy brown color that drains the light and catch the eye like a bottomless well.  Such item can also draw attention, but it is because, in the dark swirl of its apparently genuine line, the mind gets lost in itself like in a mirror — maybe the only mirror that is not deforming.

It is thanks to such tea bowls that the Way of Tea can be called « meditation in action ».  « To prepare tea »  is called temae (点前) : «a dot in front ». This dot, its where the hand is acting. Most often, it is on these very bowls. And that is where the mind can focus. In that regard, Tea is as much a spiritual drink as it is a material one. The whole host’s mind is devoted to it and the whole guest’s dive in it. Some would say that ki (気) is transmitted. And indeed, in certain temae, something more than tea goes between the host and guest(s).

The chawans from the Raku family and, in a way, the whole wabi-sabi aesthetic is this to me : to create a welcoming nature. As we long for strolls in the disquiettng forest, or the uncanny mountain, we come to create a space that reproduce them in a human way. The aim is not to produce an artwork but only to make the natural environnement itself a welcoming space for the mind. Then, as the hand touches the the tea bowl in a calm and confident, beautiful and soft motion, meditation starts.

O raku ni dôzô, let's be simple !