Is elegant, voluntary, poverty possible today?
“In order to study the way you must be poor.”
In the late 80s, I opened a charity gift shop with a bunch of friends. We had a tiny budget and high aesthetic ideals so we had to get super creative.
We found old apple crates on a farm and power-washed them in the local carwash. They became our ‘display pods’. Taking up the carpet tiles revealed holes in the floorboards that we couldn’t afford to fix, instead, we patched them with flattened baked bean cans. Our countertop was old scaffold boards.
You may remember that back then recycling hardly existed, let alone upcycling. It was around this time that I discovered Leonard Koren’s book ‘Wabi-sabi: For Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers.’ He put a name to the aesthetic we were creating.
Fast forward 33 years to the present day and Etsy is selling old apple crates for £14 plus postage. Makers all over the country are using the old scaffold boards, sanded and oiled, to make beautiful simple tables.
This morning I searched online for a workbench for my shed. I found one that was probably at least 70 years old. It was made, as was the tradition, out of old scraps of wood. It was scarred by years of woodworking and beautifully marked with old worn paint colours. It had wabi-sabi. It was £325.
What does this mean for those of us in love with the wabi-sabi aesthetic in 2020, with the rich people buying up all the apple crates?
WABI-SABI AND THE ROMANTICISING OF POVERTY
For a while, I’ve worried that wabi-sabi could become a weird cult of middle-class people romanticising poverty.
Back in the 90s, for me and my friends, the up-cycling of old objects was a creative response to a desire to live simply. We weren’t poor, we had money to pay our bills and good food to eat, but we did want to live a modest life.
Today, poverty is a reality for many British citizens, and the UK is officially in a new recession. This recession, along with many others around the world, comes at a time where there’s already massive wealth inequality.
Imagine, America’s 3 richest people own as much as the poorest 160 million Americans combined. And it’s legal to own that much money, while it’s not legal to beg for money when you have none.
When Dogen says, “In order to study the way you must be poor.” He’s not talking about the kind of poverty we increasingly see around us. You can’t practice the dharma when your basic human needs for food, shelter and safety are not in place. He’s talking about a voluntary and elegant kind of poverty. Choosing to live a simple life.
It’s not so easy to live a life of elegant poverty these days. You’d be forgiven for believing that we are each born with a basic right to live upon the earth, but apparently not. Not unless you have enough money to buy a piece of land to live on. The Universal Basic Income, that people like Charles Eisenstein are putting a strong case for, would make it a little more possible.
I don’t want to romanticise poverty, but I’m aware of living in a world that seriously romanticises wealth. So what is the middle way between wealth and poverty?
MODEST LIVING AS A MIDDLE WAY
Practising the dharma means living our lives always in search of ‘The Middle Way’. This middle way is not a compromise between extremes, but a transcending of them. For example, looking for a middle way between attachment and aversion doesn’t mean seeing everything as ‘so so’, but actually learning to fully enjoy life without any sense of holding on.
Wabi-sabi, too, looks for this transcending middle. As Leonard Koren says ‘it’s the delicate balance between the pleasure we get from things and the pleasure we get from the freedom from things.’
What would it look like in your own life to live more modestly?
IS NOW THE TIME FOR A NEW, UNROMANTIC, AESTHETIC OF ELEGANT, VOLUNTARY POVERTY?
The wabi-sabi aesthetic in tea developed in Japan during the 16th century, a time of constant warfare and political upheaval. At that time, like now, most of the power and wealth lay in the hands of just a few people.
Back then, this background of instability created an opportunity for the people to rise up and overthrow the aristocracy. It became known as gekokujō, which means "low conquers high”.
Meanwhile, this process was being mirrored in the tea ceremony. Low was conquering high as rough hand-thrown farmers bowls were replacing fine teacups and simple huts were chosen over ornate tea rooms.
How can we respond to the current cluster of crises that we find ourselves in? Does the wabi-sabi aesthetic embody the answer in some way? And how do we live romanticising neither poverty nor wealth, but instead learning to love and let go?
I would love to hear your thoughts on these questions.
Modesty and the question of what a modest awakening would look like, are themes for the September ‘Dharma Bundle’.
