Wabi-sabi and the
3 Doorways to Freedom
Venue - Vimaladhatu Retreat Centre, Germany - Book with Vimaladhatu Retreat Centre
“If we were never to fade away…how things would lose their power to move us. Because we will fade away, we are moved, because we are moved we realise more deeply that we will fade away.”
The Buddha taught that there are three doorways to freedom. We discover them when we turn towards our experiences of impermanence, insubstantiality, and suffering. Known as the lakshanas—the marks of conditioned existence—they can seem uninviting. After all, who wants to look closely at the more painful aspects of life?
Back in the 90s, Vajradarshini came across Leonard Koren's Wabi-sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers, which begins with these lines:
Wabi-sabi is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. A beauty of things modest and humble. A beauty of things unconventional.
Could wabi-sabi mean finding beauty in the lakshanas themselves? If so, perhaps they become easier to embrace. This realisation set Vajradarshini on a path she is still walking today: the path of finding beauty in truth—even in life's more painful truths.
Rooted in Japanese culture, wabi-sabi invites us to cherish the fleeting, the worn, and the understated. It reminds us that life's most precious moments often lie in simplicity. We are encouraged to notice the magic in everyday rituals—a cup of tea, watching the seasons change, or tending to small creative acts.
This retreat takes us on a journey into our own experience of the lakshanas. With the support of beauty and community, we'll find our way to these thresholds, the vimoksha mukhas, the gateways to liberation. Each offers its own insight, and each insight brings a new kind of freedom.
Every moment can reveal profound truths. Moments of impermanence, insubstantiality and suffering are like cracks in our everyday world. Through these cracks, we glimpse chinks of light—three doorways into a new reality: signless, wishless, and open.