Living the Japanese Arts and Ways: 45 Paths to Meditation and Beauty

by H.E. Davey

Ikebana and tea ceremony, karate and calligraphy--what do these traditional Japanese arts have in common? All represent different forms of training and practice, but all stem from shared principles of spiritual practice, moving meditation, and beauty. With practical examples and easy-to-follow exercises, this book concisely introduces 45 living concepts of the Way, from "wabi" and the "immovable mind" to "respect" and "duty," explaining their traditional Japanese roots and also how to incorporate them into our daily lives for greater serenity, concentration, and creativity.

Living the Japanese Arts & Ways is now out of print, but the entire book is included in The Japanese Way of the Artist (Stone Bridge Press), which also contains Brush Meditation and The Japanese Way of the Flower. Get three popular books by H. E. Davey for the price of one. Order The Japanese Way of the Artist from Amazon.com and discover the secrets of Japan's ancient arts, crafts, and forms of meditation.

 H. E. Davey is Director of the Sennin Foundation Center for Japanese Cultural Arts. He has decades of training in Japanese yoga, healing arts, martial arts, and fine arts.

Genres: Japan, Nonfiction, Spirituality

212 pages, Paperback

First published December 10, 2002

Reviews

[Helynne]

Since I have Japanese family members (my brother is married to a lovely Japanese woman, and they have lived in Japan since 1997, and have a son, who was born in 2001), I figured I needed to read up more on the ancient artistic philsophies that make the Japanese society so delicate, precise, and beautiful. This book leads the reader alphabetically through numerous Japanese terms and explains how each is used in artistic ways or simply in daily life. For example, Aikido means "the way of union with life energy (ki)of the universe" (22). More specifically, aikido is the way in which "life could best be lived in agreement with the Tao, which, in essence, is a way of living that is natural, simple and free from all conditioning" (23). Another interesting term is bonsai, which is more than just a method of trimming small trees. It depicts "simplicity, naturalness, harmony and artlessness" (25). I could go on and on quoting from various terms, but nearly all refer back to the simplicity and beauty that lead people to quickened insight and heightened perception. I'll end with another cool concept--wabi, which is an aesthetic ideal that strongly resists easy definition "In wabi art we find beauty with a feeling of austerity, the recognition that beauty can be found informally, even in the depths of poverty. Objects of great refinement can often be constructed out of simple, inexpensive materials. A classical Japanese wooden house is an example of the unpolished appeal of wabi" (191). We Americans certainly could learn a lot about beauty and aesthetics if we took more of these terms into daily practice!

[Maria]

Not so much a how-to book as a discussion about how the concept of do (path/way) applies to various Japanese arts and to life. Very thought-provoking.