Maja Milcinski 
The Aesthetics of Decay 
The Japanese aesthetics of Wabi-Sabi among various interpretations can 
be understood as well in the sense of - »contemporary aestheticism which 
advocates the dissolution of the distinction between art and life.«1 The con-
cept of Wabi, which developed its positive and profound meaning unde r a 
strong influence of Zen Buddhism, can be translated as »loneliness; insuffi-
ciency, refined poverty; a humble life in solitude with nature as companion; 
to lead a solitary life, contemplating nature and appreciating the spiritual 
and aesthetic values underlying insufficiency.«2 Wabi-Sabi, the two central 
concepts of Japanese aesthetics, can be found already at the transition of 
Chinese painting to Japan. In their later development the concepts have 
been remodeled in a specific Japanese way, so that today only their Japanese 
character is being stressed. 
If we look back into Chinese philosophy, in which the Ji (in Japanese 
Sabi) originates, we come across it in the sense of absolute quiet, tranquil-
ity and peacefulness. However, if we try to systemize some of the common 
meanings of this notion, we come from a broad apparent heterogeneity into 
sedimental thought which approaches the tranquil support as a potential 
position of change, namely movement, whose mover itself remains unmoved. 
In Daoism, we come across the notion o f j i in the Dao de j ing, as well as in 
Zhuang Zi. 
Dao de j ing (25) 
»There was something formed out of chaos, 
That was born before Heaven and Earth. 
Quiet and still! Pure and deep! 
It stands on its own and doesn' t change. 
It can be regarded as the mother of Heaven and Earth. 
I do not yet know its name: 
I 'style' it ' the Way'. 
1 Amy Newman, »Aestheticism, Feminism, and the Dynamics of Reversal,« in Aesthetics 
in Feminist Perspective, ed. Hilde Hein and Carolyn Korsmeyer (Bloomington and 
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993), 193. 
2 Setsuko Kojima and Gene A. Crane, A Dictionary of Japanese Culture (Tokyo: The Japan 
Times, 1987), 380. 
Filozofski vestnik, XX (2/1999 - XIVICA Supplement), pp. 2 1 3 - 2 0 0 191 
Maja Milcinski 
Were I forced to give it a name, I would call it ' the Great'.« ... 8 that is 
solitary quiet, tranquil, voiceless, spaceless. In Zhuang Zi the same character 
appears in the connection with the state of quiet tranquility and peacefulness. 
In Tian dao it appears in relation with the »absence of activity — quiet sitting«. 
In Buddhism we come across Ji as peace, silence, calm in connection with 
nirvana. It is used, in a sense, to extinguish various unnecessary ruminations, 
so that the ultimate reality could spring out. The various complexities of 
meanings that appear in Buddhism could be united in the following catego-
ries: 
-calm, silent, mute, sad, tranquil, deserted; 
-tranquility and silence of the truth 
- i n connection with the true wisdom as yoke of two virtues (truth and 
intelligence) that should in Buddhism lead one to salvation 
- t h e transition into nirvana - the state without troubles and sorrows, 
without the movements of time - the condition for delight in peace and nir-
vana. 
According to its meaning Sabi is Ji. It expresses the liberation of the 
human path from sorrow and torments. It is interesting that the other pos-
sible translations - silence, sadness, abandoned state, loneliness, negligence, 
melancholic standstill - lead us to the world of nirvana, which in its essence is 
not somethingjoyful. It is the notion of spiritual condition of withdrawal, lib-
eration from perplexed reflections. At the description of the place, the char-
acter is used as designation of entirely silent, mournful place without people. 
When the landscapes are described the character is used for a tranquil, silent, 
deserted condition without any voice, shape or form. In an artistic sense it 
reveals the impression entirely voiceless and shapeless, and as a point where 
everything is extinguished and there in no existence left. 
In the works of early Neo-Confucians (brothers Cheng) Ji appears in 
connection with the demand of removing the turbulent thoughts as: 
- t h e entire tranquility and peace 
- o n e should wait until the point where everything is extinguished and 
the absolute quiet is achieved 
- o n e should keep the inner peace and protect oneself from inner move-
ments 
-with this experience and feeling you can reach whatever place without 
obstructions and remain tranquil, unexcited. This is the way to accomplish 
the entire world.4 
3 Lao-Tzu, Te-Tao Ching, trans. Robert G. Henrichs (NewYork: Ballantine Books, 1989), 
77. 
4 Ercheng quanshu fu suoyin (Complete works of the Brothers Cheng), ed. Zhu Xi (Tokyo: 
Chubun shuppansha, 1979). 
214 
The Aesthetics of Decay 
The notion of Ji as a condition emptied f rom everything - the point 
where everything is extinguished, where one can find tranquility and peace, 
leads us to the aim of various yogic or meditative techniques, which should 
help us to achieve the transcendence of logical, discursive pattern of search-
ing and gets to a basis for a different approach with oneself. It is the loss of 
Ego and the return into the condition where the body and mind are still 
uniform. There is no antagonism of body and soul, since in this state of 
egolessness the state of vacuity is achieved. »Aesthetic ekstasis«5 is not only 
»standing apart f rom self«, but reaching the state of transcending the Ego. 
The border between the outer world and oneself is overcome — or better 
said, between that which conditions us to think about the external existence 
of »external« world, the process in which mind's false notion about »one's« 
body, which cannot be separated f rom all the rest is overcome. The logic 
starts at the point where the body and mind are separated and is related to 
the level of intellect, whereas the body should represent the affective side 
of human personality. In the realm of Wabi-Sabi, however, the Sabi Kokoro 
is cultivated. The notion of Kokoro leads to the trans-linguistic sphere in 
which »the domain of internal language coincides with that of 'conscious-
ness'«.0 Kokoro itself »in its broad sense,... signifies the whole domain of in-
ner subjectivity covering both the 'not-yet-activated' and 'already-activated', 
the ground and its manifestation, including images, ideas, thoughts, feelings 
and emotions,«7 the notion of Sabi Kokoro depicts the human mind, which 
is released f rom profane engagements, far away from the noise of the world 
dwelling in the realm of mystical silence and peace. This condition is the 
liberation f rom human sorrow and gloomy rumination. 
To give oneself entirely without any second thought, but still stay tran-
quil, unexcited, this is the basis f rom which one can reach the entire world. 
The condition of complete tranquility and the experience o f j i is the con-
dition for anything coming into being. Another dimension of Buddhist 
notion of Ji and in later development Sabi is important , namely the one 
where the condition is reached where there is no alternative or differentia-
tion anymore. How did the Japanese unders tand the notions of life and 
death in this context, on the level of realization of the truth in the sense of 
a psychophysical awareness far above the pure intellect? It is namely the 
spiritual level on which the bifurcations of good-evil, black-white, beautiful-
5 Hilde Hein, »Refining Feminist Theory,« in Aesthetics in Feminist Perspective, ed. Hilde 
Hein and Carolyn Korsmeyer, 11. 
6 Toshihiko and Toyo Isutsu, The Theory of Beauty in the Classical Aesthetics of Japan (The 
Hague /Bos ton /London: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1981), 10. 
7 Ibid., 8. 
215 
Maja Milcinski 
ugly, life-death are overcome since it opens up the way of transcendence in 
a sense of the wisdom of ultimate reality. It is the level far beyond the one 
described in Nietzsche as »Life itself recognizes no solidarity, n o 'equal 
rights', between the healthy and the degenerate parts of an organism: one 
must excise the latter - or the whole will perish. - Sympathy for decadents, 
equal rights for the ill-constituted - that would be the profoundest immo-
rality, that would be antinature itself as morality!«8 It is rather an activity 
which leads one to a transrational level, which is not inferior to the rational 
cognition, since it encompasses all kinds and grades of experience. 
We must take into consideration the fact that in the realm of Buddhist 
aesthetics, particularly in the domain of Wabi-Sabi, rationality as such does 
not offer us universal, common, and generally valid standpoint, since many 
aspects of the concepts under investigation can be experienced in medita-
tion and not understood just with knowledge, by pure erudition. They ap-
pear by following a radical empirical experience - experience of intuitive 
recognition of the things in their undifferentiated unity. In the process of 
such an experience, the level of tranquility is reached, the absolute quiet, 
Sabi and voidness that are the basis of the profoundest and most important 
insights. One of them being the notion of death and decay which in the light 
of oneness of things and events never gained negative connotation, or to 
say it with Zhuang Zi: »Life is the companion of death, death is the begin-
ning of life. Who understands their workings? Man's life is a coming together 
of breath. If it comes together, there is life; if it scatters, there is death. And 
if life and death are companions to each other, then what is there for us to 
be anxious about?«11 It is the attitude which is in accord with the notion of 
interrelatedness of everything: »The ten thousand things are really one. We 
look on some as beautiful because they are rare or unearthly; we look on 
others as ugly because they are foul and rotten. But the foul and rotten may 
turn into the rare and unearthy, and the rare and unearthly may turn into 
the foul and rotten. So it is said, You have only to comprehend the one 
breath that is the world. The sage never ceases to value oneness.«10 
In the Buddhist context the metaphysical notion of impermanence , 
transience or ephemerality was created. It supports the Buddhist idea that 
all material things are considered to have come into existence through some 
cause and are subjected to the process of creation, abiding, transformation 
8 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale 
(NewYork: Random House, 1967), 734. 
9 Chuang Tzu, The Complete Works, trans. Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University 
Press, 1968), 235. 
10 Ibid., 236. 
216 
The Aesthetics of Decay 
and exdncdon. This process, moreover, is cyclical: all things are born and 
die over and over again. The cycle of rebirth can be escaped only by elimi-
nating all desire and thus attaining nirvana or enlightenment, the only stable, 
nontransient state. Such an attitude is present in the aesthetics of classical 
Japanese works like The Tales oflse, and it also makes it possible to find beauty 
in its vanishing and to accept the fact that the transience and evanescence 
of all things make everything even more beautiful. 
The Japanese model has not offered any illusions. At various stages of 
Japanese history it was felt necessary to educate people in confront ing the 
inevitability of corporeal death. Therefore the temple images were formed 
which are very naturalistic and therefore even more persuasive than the 
frescoes of the Death dance in Europe, where death takes the form of the 
skeleton. The Japanese images take a different form and have a slightly dif-
ferent idea behind them. The fact that humanity is sentenced to death and 
to impermanence is shown by the temple images, which depict the entire 
process of decay of the human corpse, f rom death to final disintegration. 
Such was just one of the ways in which the deep acceptance of death has been 
shown in the realm of aesthetics in the Japanese history. T h e other one is 
the tradition of writing the death poems, the poems in which the Buddhist 
monk, philosopher or poet expressed his views on life and death on the verge 
of his own death. Usually they were written by Zen monks, some of which 
were believed to have the power of predicting their own m o m e n t of death. 
The poems show us the attitude of these Buddhists towards death, which is 
not something unexpected, an event which they would want to evade or 
postpone. 
The blossom became one of the dominant symbols of the transience 
of human existence and its beauty. In various stages of the year it got either 
the under tone of hope, longing or sadness, depending on the stage in which 
the blossom has been. Unlike Europe which cherishes the stage of the full-
blossom and India which worshipped the blossom itself, Japan developed a 
deep aesthetics of dead blossoms lying on moss or stones. This reflects the 
worship of the entire life-cycle, including the stage of decomposit ion and 
decay, and does not worship only youth, vigor and vitality. 
The aloness, solitude, which is not loneliness, with its negative conno-
tation has been cultivated as the way of positive alienation.11 In the death 
poems, also it is an important under tone, since it makes us aware of the fact 
that death is the very moment which is essentially experienced by each in-
11 Futing Liao, »Positive Alienation and its Reflection in Taoist Thought,« International 
Sociology, Vol. 4, No. 1 (March 1989), 5-17. 
217 
Maja Milcinski 
dividual alone, without the interaction with the others which characterizes 
the life. The Japanese attitude towards death, or better, towards acceptance 
of it in all its manifestations, including the stages of dissolution and decay, 
has of ten been unders tood wrongly, like certain morbid mysterious and 
esoteric practice. However, it cultivates the sense of beauty, which is present 
also in the death poems, based on the equilibrium and equanimity and on 
subjective fulness of Awareness, born from a specific form of contemplation, 
which enables a continuity between the inner and outer speech of the poet. 
This can be experienced only on the basis of enlightenment, a state in which 
the consciousness has liberated itself from any form of theoretical rumina-
tion and has reached the natural simplicity very close to the Daoist practice 
of wu-wei, the absence of any form of intentional activity, which influenced 
also their attitude towards death: »1 received life because the time had come; 
I will lose it because the order of things passes on. Be content with this time 
and dwell in this order and then neither sorrow nor joy can touch you. In 
ancient times this was called the 'freeing of the bound ' . There are those who 
cannot free themselves, because they are bound by things. But nothing can 
ever win against Heaven - that's the way it's always been. What would I have 
to resent?«12 
Sabi, which in its later development has been connected with simple, 
rustic utensils for the tea ceremony, can be translated as: »patina; agedness; 
solitary look; rustic simplicity; the quiet beauty of things in a state of natu-
ral decay; active appreciation of the value of things seemingly negative, such 
as rusticity, agedness, loneliness, deficiency«13 has been cultivated also in the 
landscape painting. The solitary angler, never seen from the front, enclosed 
and surrounded in the haze, represents the tranquil beauty of a highly re-
alized man and his place in the Cosmos in desolation and solitude, covered 
with a patina of simplicity. Striking, with the air of naturalness, transcend-
ing the notion of what would be called the poverty that is, indifferent to 
material luxury. In the midst of life but still far f rom others, distanced f rom 
them, as to be fishing, diving deeply into the ultimate reality holding to it 
in its suchness. Deeply aware of the fact that when we most badly need a 
neighbour, we always happen to be alone, he sits in the boat, knowing that 
the path of discovery has to be walked by each of us alone. What would be 
called his own Self has been identified with the ultimate reality which left 
no room for feeling lonely. Everything was one and realizing this, one is not 
separated f rom anything anymore. In this realm of nonat tachment nothing-
12 Chuang Tzu, The Complete Works, 84-5. 
13 Setsuko Kojima arid Gene A. Crane, A Dictionary of Japanese Culture, 278. 
218 
The Aesthetics of Decay 
ness became the basis of existence and the distinction of him and o ther 
disappeared. Knowing his own heart, he was pursuing the activity not yet 
differentiated into this or that. There he was meeting with original face. 
With no expectations and hopes from the Other and for the future, the 
fisherman, solitary angler, knows that it is not the virtue, which is the basis 
of human relationships, but insufficiency. Virtue being distinctively human 
and very limited, shaping the temporally agreements that regulate people's 
coming together, being together and separating during their momentary 
existence in the flow of eons. With this realization, there is no space for 
mourn ing and recovery f rom it, since the solitary angler represents the 
unlimited spiritual richness of the realized man, the quality of satoric aware-
ness. Therefore , he is able to place his life in the proper relation to the 
universe. Leading a solitary life he contemplates the enormity of all things 
and his own powerlessness. In his embodiment of Wabi-Sabi, he represents 
the refined poverty and rustic simplicity, the profound aesthetic apprecia-
tion of poverty, deficiency, loneliness, agedness. There is nothing to tend to 
or aim at, no remoteness and no horizons of the future well-being anymore. 
Still, the mind is directed to infinity, free from frustrations caused by limita-
tions, aware of the permanent changes of nature as well as the ones in touch 
with it. The transience gives the deep appreciation of the life as such, its 
shortness and each and every moment in it. As the inhabitant of the world 
of Wabi-Sabi, his state goes beyond conceptualization, beyond being grasped 
by the words, since it transcends the expression. Subtle intuition gives room 
for nature to apply patina of age and appreciate all transformations as be-
ing each in themselves beautiful. 
The aesthetics of decay, so well expressed in the Sino-Japanese concepts 
ofWabi-Sabi(ji), as well as in the tradition of japanese death poems, directs 
us to the fact that the solution of the existence puzzle is not to be searched 
for outside, but in our heart-minds. The pure, absolute reality in its suchness, 
as revealed to the enlightened mind is beyond the distinctions as: beauti-
ful-ugly, good-bad, death-life, Wabi and Sabi. Therefore it gives no room for 
the illusions, since it represents the sobering down from the impoisonment 
of the existential illusions. Various techniques of achieving harmony and the 
practices of purification of one's heart formed part of the realm of aesthet-
ics in the Sino-Japanese tradition. The individual spirit has been developed 
by mind-expanding exercises, and the sense of the illusionary Self or Ego 
has been undercut through the direct experience of the universe and one's 
place in it. Such a process is developed on a level different f rom the logi-
cally-discursive one, which in the Buddhist context gets t ranscended by the 
switch of consciousness, where the distinctions reveal themselves as illusion-
219 
Maja Milcinski 
ary and arbitrary. Death poems point at the liberation f rom the bonds of 
death and life by the deep insight into human existence, which is experi-
enced on the level where one teaches »with the voice of silence«.14 
The initial stage of my research of Wabi-Sabi has been conducted in 1989-90 
while I ivas the Japan Foundation Felloiu to which I zvish to express my appreciation. 
14 Japanese Death Poems, ed. Yoel Hoffmann (Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, 1986), 91. 
220