Wabi sabi acknowledges three things: "nothing is perfect, nothing lasts, and nothing is finished." So, at first glance, it seems to celebrate the very thing that causes suffering. Yet, Basho found that wabi sabi led to enlightenment. So what is going on here? Basho himself studied Zen for several years and traveled in disguise as a Zen priest, yet he clearly became attached to people and places, wept openly beside ancient battlegrounds and other sites of romance or valor. He suffered gladly the pains of attachment and sympathy, identified with nature and its pathos. Either he was not very disciplined in his Buddhist practice, or he understood something about attachment and loss that we could do well to learn.
"If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is a law, and no amount of pretending will alter that reality."
Dan Millman
Source: Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives
As soon as the love relationship does not lead me to me, as soon as I in a love relationship do not lead another person to himself, this love, even if it seems to be the most secure and ecstatic attachment I have ever experienced, is not true love. For real love is dedicated to continual becoming.
When you begin your transcendental training, focusing your best efforts, without attachment to outcomes, you will understand the peaceful warrior's way.
Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible.
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