Developing a mind of winter
“Spring passes and one remembers one’s innocence. Summer passes and one remembers one’s exuberance. Autumn passes and one remembers one’s reverence. Winter passes and one remembers one’s perseverance.”
Wabi-sabi is an unexpected beauty. We find it in places we’ve never thought of as ‘beautiful’; junk piled up in a builder’s yard. Or at times when we assume ourselves immune to beauty; amid grief or illness.
Leonard Koren describes it as :
‘A beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.
A beauty of things modest and humble.
A beauty of things unconventional.’
Looking out my window at the bare branches against the steel grey sky, it strikes me that winter is the wabi-sabi-est season. It was only recently that I was looking out on a spectacular display of gold and red autumn leaves. Now that was beautiful! You couldn’t help but comment on it.
Before that, the summer. The world in full bloom, manifesting flowers and fruits, the epitome of beauty. Even the subtle beauty of spring, hopeful bright green shoots pushing their way out of the still cold ground. But now?
Now I no longer hear people comment on the beauty of these bare branches, of the car lights reflected on wet roads, or the bus stop glass covered in ice crystals. Perhaps you need what Wallace Stevens calls ‘a mind of winter’.
The Snowman
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitterOf the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare placeFor the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.- Wallace Stevens
One must have a ‘mind of winter’ to look out at the grey sky and bare branches and not to think of any misery in the sound of the wind that blows through them.
This mind of winter is the wabi-sabi mind. The mind that finds beauty in the barest of places.
I thought I would use a few elements of Leonard Koren’s wabi-sabi framework to explore how winter could be the wabi-sabi-est of seasons.
The metaphysical basis of wabi-sabi
‘Things are either devolving towards or evolving from nothingness.’
Each of the seasons shows us this universal truth, that things are either devolving towards or evolving from nothingness. In the autumn we watch the leaves fall from the trees onto the path, the rain comes, frost too and gradually the leaves disintegrate back into the earth. In the spring, from that same leaf composted earth, evolves tiny shoots and buds.
The nearer something is to nothingness, the more wabi-sabi it is. It’s like homeopathy. The tinier the dose, the stronger the effect.
The metaphysical basis of Buddhism is also nothingness, shunyata. But we shouldn’t imagine that nothingness is nothing. It’s more akin to everything. It’s where everything appears from and it’s what everything dissolves back into. The Buddhist tradition is full of metaphors for this nothingness; the clear blue sky; the ground of being; the cosmic womb.
This nothingness, which is often called emptiness, is paradoxically full. It is full of potential.
Tuning into the wabi-sabi beauty of winter helps us to lean into the empty nature of things and if we don’t yet have a ‘mind of winter’ we may find this leads us into nihilistic states, where life starts to feel a little meaningless. When that happens, we can remind ourselves that everything comes from emptiness.
Wabi-sabi spiritual values
Truth comes from the observation of nature.
There’s a tradition in Buddhism, as well as other religions, for people to live as hermits, that is to live alone and away from other people. Often when we think of them, we think of what they’ve removed from their lives; people, busyness, processions. But these people have gone to live in nature and the significance of nature is far more than what it doesn’t contain (people and so on).
Nature is itself a teacher, a teacher of Dharma. We could literally sit on our veranda watching the night become day and the day become night, watching autumn become winter and winter, spring, and we would receive all the Dharma teachings we need.
So how does nature teach us how things really are? The truth of things. In Buddhist terms, it’s teaching us the lakshanas, dukkha, anitya and anatman. Or as Leonard Koren names them in his wabi-sabi philosophy, imperfection, impermanence and incompleteness.
Look closely at even the most perfect flower and you’ll find imperfections. Many times I’ve gone into the garden to pick a few flowers for a vase and flowers that from the window looked perfect turn out to be fading, or misshaped.
Of course, from a wabi-sabi point of view, there’s a special sort of beauty in imperfection. Looking out at the trees now, with their odd shapes, broken branches and parts that have died. Each is perfectly imperfect.
Then the truth of impermanence. Is there anything that shows this more clearly or more beautifully than nature? There’s dawn, the dew on the grass, the heat of the midday sun. Later, the shadows lengthening, the leaves falling from the trees, the light at dusk. How can we think we’ll live forever? Winter brings this home to us in all it’s stark empty beauty.
Lastly, the deepest truth, anatman, the lack of any fixed or stable essence to anything. See how the tiny grey seed becomes a huge tomato plant, stems thicker than my thumb, great big juicy red fruits that, quite literally, become me. The seed, the earth, the sun, and the rain became the tomato plant. The plant, then pulled from the ground, goes onto the compost heap where, with the help of moisture from the rain and warmth from the sun, it turns back into earth once again.
Everything is on a journey, a journey from nothingness or towards it. And in midwinter we are closest to that mysterious nothingness.
Beauty can be coaxed out of ugliness.
I’m looking out my window, on those bare trees. It’s 2 degrees, damp, grey, still. Inside it’s warm and I’m comfortable at my desk with my coffee and a little candlelight. It doesn’t seem that there’s much beauty out there waiting for me. In fact, every other season offers a more obvious beauty. But I know from experience that once I get outside, into the woods, there’ll be beauty everywhere. That’s why I have a practice of ‘going out in all weathers’.
Winter is the season of home, of staying in, and I relish that. But I’ll also make a point of going out. In Sweden, the saying is, “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes.” I’ll get my silk long-johns on, my mittens, my big boots and head out soon.
Wabi-sabi beauty is a beauty that’s not obvious. Leonard Koren says it has to be coaxed out. Can we gently and patiently draw out the beauty hidden in winter this year?
The wabi-sabi state of mind
Acceptance of the inevitable.
Thinking back to the summer, being woken by the light at 3am, all the windows open, the endlessly long days, walking barefoot outside. It’s so hard to imagine now. Just as back then I told myself ‘soon it will be cold and dark’, yet it seemed impossible while the sun was beating down on me.
Winter has always been an ordeal that we must go through. As the novelist Sinclair Lewis said, ‘Winter is not a season, it’s an occupation.’ And much more so for people, both now and in the past, that have no heating, no hot water, perhaps even no home. Winter kills people. And yet, like death, it is inevitable. Perhaps it is a little death we go through each year.
Leonard Koren talks of the wabi-sabi state of mind as having an acceptance of the inevitable. What would it mean to adopt this state of mind for the winter months? To give up our resistance, our impatience with winter, and instead decide we will endure it. The dictionary definition of endure is to bear without resistance or with patience.
The season of winter is full of opportunities too. It’s a time of rest, stillness, silence and reflection. Just as in nature, spring grows out of winter. Our vitality, creativity, clarity and wisdom grow out of this fallow empty, if only we can trust it.
Appreciation of the cosmic order.
Winter is often seen as a liminal time, a season where the veil between the seen and unseen feels thinner, and the world pauses for a while. As Tove Jansson says, it’s a time for everything that is a little shy and rum -
“There are such a lot of things that have no place in summer and autumn and spring. Everything that’s a little shy and a little rum. Some kinds of night animals and people that don’t fit in with others and that nobody really believes in. They keep out of the way all the year. And then when everything’s quiet and white and the nights are long and most people are asleep—then they appear.”
This year don’t wish away the winter, see if you can recognise some of the opportunities it offers.
Just like a night without sleep leaves us depleted, so would a year without wintering.
A Mind of Winter
Embracing the season of wabi-sabi
This is the theme of December’s Dharma Bundle. It includes:
Video or audio: 4 ways to trust emptiness of winter
Audio walking meditation: Winter walking meditation
Video or audio: The practice of wabi-sabi in winter
Creative Assignment: Boredom: confronting the dragon
Video: Zoom workshop recording
Plus a live workshop 12th October 7pm (GMT)
Preparing for a Wabi-Sabi Yuletide
Find out more about the Dharma Bundle here or sign up below ↓
A ‘bundle’ of dharma resources, thoughtfully made and beautifully packaged.
