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Zen & Kids’ Books
Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki repeatedly encouraged his students to acquire “Beginner’s Mind”
In the most remarkable picture book I have seen in years, author Mark Reibstein endeavors to explain the Japanese term “wabi sabi.” This difficult-to-translate phrase describes a kind of ordinary beauty and Reibstein links it to the “pleasing simplicity” of the Sixteenth Century tea master Sen no Rikyu who preferred handmade clay cups over luxurious gold-and-lacquer chinaware. He also links the term with “wistfulness,” a characteristic of the three-line poem known as the haiku made most famous by the Seventeenth Century Zen monk Matsuo Basho. Here’s an example:
How many, many things
They bring to mind —
Cherry blossoms!
Reibstein lived in Kyoto and throughout this book his love of that ancient Japanese city is evident. Here is the story of a cat named Wabi Sabi who goes on a journey to discover the meaning of her name (wandering to such well known Kyoto locales as Mount Hei and Ginkakuji) and meeting various animals who offer their own explanations. Throughout this travel narrative, Reibstein intersperses haiku by Basho and his successor Masaoka Shiki.
