The Art and Philosophy of Kintsugi - Life Lessons

 

Kintsugi pottery (image: The Matheson Trust website)

Philosophy teaches us how to think and how to live life. Recently I came across a workshop Embracing the Broken – The Art and Philosophy of Kintsugi, to be held on a weekend in my city Bangalore.

Getting self-confession out of my way first, I didn’t knew about the philosophy Kintsugi, before stumbling upon this workshop advertisement.

To know about it more, I looked up on Google and Youtube. Sharing what I learned, in this blog. There are two parts to Kintsugi – The art, craft, it’s technicalities and the philosophy, it’s deeper meaning.

The art, craft and technicalities of Kintsugi:

Kintsugi translates as “golden joinery”, or “golden repair”, the Japanese craft of using lacquer and powdered/dusted form of metals such as gold, silver, etc to rejoin and repair a broken ceramic item. The Kintsugi restoration process differs from other restoration techniques. In other restoration techniques the craft-person’s primary objective is to conceal the visibility of the restoration. On the contrary, in Kintsugi the craft-person makes the restorations are so obvious, that they can be considered nothing less than celebrations of the usage, cracks and scars.

Materials needed for Kintsugi‘s are: lacquer (a binding medium), a palette knife, a fine paintbrush, and powdered metal (usually gold or a shiny material of choice). The process is fairly simple: mix lacquer with a binding medium–rice or flour to make glue, use it to stick the (ceramic) pieces back together. Before the glue dries up, sprinkle the powdered metal on it, highlighting the jointed break lines.

The philosophy of Kintsugi:

At the heart of Kintsugi, lies the revolutionary idea: embrace the break! The breakage and repair are part of an object’s history, not something to disguise and to be ashamed of. The golden lines traversing through the repaired piece don’t just hold the pieces together—they tell the story of survival and transformation, thereby becoming the most striking feature. Kintsugi celebrates the imperfection, aging, and damage by making the mend visible.

Kintsugi, draws upon Wabi-Sabi, the Japanese aesthetic philosophy that finds beauty in imperfection and embraces the nature’s law of ageing with passage of time. ‘Wabi-sabi’ celebrates beauty by embracing it’s imperfection and ageing.

Kintsugi also draws upon the concept of Mono no Aware, which embodies an awareness of nature’s law of impermanence, cyclical transient nature of all things. This viewpoint, finds beauty in the transient nature of life. (Think about it in the context of Japan, cherry blossom, blooms to it’s fullest before withering off and this cycle repeats with nature’s seasons).

Kintsugi pottery (image: RTFF.org)

Reading about Kintsugi and the philosophy behind it, has left me with a deep sense of appreciation for this artform. Next time when I come across a Kintsugi ceramic pottery, through it kintsugi practitioners will speak to me – “Breakage is inevitable, nothing remains permanent and unchanged forever. Denial and resisting this is futile, wisdom is in embracing this eternal truth.”

Kintsugi philosophy and it’s practitioners understand that the moment of breaking is painful, but it also opens up possibilities for transformation, that wouldn’t exist otherwise.

We can draw upon many valuable life lessons on how to think? and how to live life? from Kintsugi philosophy. If not listing out many, do remember these three key life lessons and practice them:

1. Acceptance: Life is a journey, and like in any journey there will be sunny days and rainy days, there will be good experiences and bad experiences, there will be days when we will reach our destination and there will be days when we will be lost in the wilderness. Kintsugi, teaches us acceptance of all experiences in life. Life is about embracing everything.
2. Let go: Life’s nature is impermanence, cyclical and nothing lasts forever. Our ego and our attachment to material possessions, status, title, position, power, success makes it very difficult for us to let it go, when they end. Also, when life situations are on the downhill, we fail to recognise, even this will not last forever. Life’s nature is cyclical, time and tide will turn, so let to go and practice being equanimous.
3. Pursue excellence, not perfection: The majority narrative of society, consumerism is selling perfectionism. Flawless beauty, youthfulness forever, a promised land, a picture perfect slices of life across all domains. This narrative conditions us to hide our vulnerabilities, makes us fearful of failures and we develop inferiority complex because our yardstick of being perfect makes us fall short of these unattainable standards. Kintsugi, teaches us, there is no such binary concepts of perfection and imperfection, in nature. So life is lived better, if one drops the idea of unattainable perfection, and picks up the idea of pursuing excellence. In the pursuit of excellence, one accepts striving for incremental improvements, to pivot, and the mind frees itself from the fear of failure, on it’s pursuit of excellence.          

Isn’t this a great philosophy to practice in life? In today’s geo-political, technological, economic upheavals and uncertainties, we will fall, fall, break, and pick up scars multiple times in our life’s personal and professional journeys.

So let’s develop the Kintsugi mindset, to accept, to let go and being in the pursuit of excellence and not perfection. Let us wear our scars up our sleeves, because these are not imperfections to hide, these are inspiring life’s story of survival, not giving up, transformation and thriving.