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My Wabi-Sabi Master is My Dog
4 Things Frustrated Dog Owners Should Know
4 Things Frustrated Dog Owners Should Know
by Mark Eckenrode
You've probably had a day or two when you felt like your dog just .....
My Wabi-Sabi Master is My Dog4 Things Frustrated Dog Owners Should Know
by Mark Eckenrode
You've probably had a day or two when you felt like your dog just .....
Perfection is a gooey chew toy on a worn out old blankie
By GALINA PEMBROKE
Up until recently, three dominant attitudes have ruled my living space:
5 Tips For Choosing The Best Vet For Your Dog
If you haven't already found one, or worked with one in the past, you need to find a vet. Pick one you feel comfortable with, and who answers your questions in full, .....
=623; my boyfriend's: if it breaks, fix it. If you haven't already found one, or worked with one in the past, you need to find a vet. Pick one you feel comfortable with, and who answers your questions in full, .....
=623; my own: if it breaks, replace it.
=623; and my dog's: if it breaks, keep it and love it all the more
Without realizing it, my dog has been a master practitioner of wabi-sabi, a Japanese aesthetic philosophy that celebrates the simple and the handmade, including the flaws.
Especially the flaws'
More than just the appreciation of unpretentious art and craft, wabi-sabi is a uniquely joyful way of viewing and contemplating the world. As Leonard Koren describes it in Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers, wabi-sabi is "the beauty of things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete." It is no coincidence that the first practitioners of wabi-sabi were Zen Buddhist monks and tea-masters.
My dog Tucker is a 30-pound, wooly sheltie-crossbreed; painted by the creator with a wholly imperfect, abstract pattern of brown, black and white. With his flattened, rock-chewing teeth; he is an unlikely leader. Yet, through his actions, Tucker has shown me the beauty of wabi-sabi .
What Should You Know About Your Dog Before You Start Training
In order to train your dog perfectly, you need to know him well ' his needs, behavior, as well as moods .....
Presents and Presence In order to train your dog perfectly, you need to know him well ' his needs, behavior, as well as moods .....
Every year I celebrate Tucker's birthday which I maintain is the day he stepped out of the dog pound and in through my door. For me, this means the renewed challenge of shopping for a new dog toy that promises to delight Tucker and light up his wabi-sabi life. For Tucker, this means the aggravation of me dangling another squeak-toy or Kong product in front of his unimpressed snout. I am such a consumer fool.
Every year it's the same. Polite dog that he is, Tucker examines the shiny new object with feigned interest before dismissing it. He then curls up in his war-torn blanket to gnaw on his ancient, barely identifiable, mangled ball. Once a perfect sphere, it now resembles a cracked egg. With its aged crevices and broken, rounded protuberances, I am unable to understand how he could be near it- let alone mouth it.
Tucker, however, couldn't be happier. Drooling contentedly over his gooey-soft ball, he shows me that perfection cannot be bought, achieved, manipulated, or maintained. It is an inner experience: canine wabi-sabi.
Tips On Hanlding Getting A Second-Hand Dog
It's appealing to see ourself "saving"
an adult dog from an animal shelter but dealing with a dog .....
The Perfect Cloud It's appealing to see ourself "saving"
an adult dog from an animal shelter but dealing with a dog .....
In India, there is a mantra signifying this feeling of fullness. Translated, it is "That is perfect. This is perfect. From the perfect springs the perfect. If the perfect is taken from the perfect, the perfect remains."
Too bad this understanding is absent from so much of our "new is better" consumer society.
Wabi-sabi is a less wasteful way of living. Even Tucker's assortment of bought-and-soon- forgotten dog toys can be donated. Satisfaction with things as they are, though used and worn, means we replace less and save more.
Handmade and one-of-a-kind, wabi-sabi pottery is deliberately and gloriously "pre-owned" right out of the box. Wabi-sabi regards these flaws as enhancements. Western culture imitates this in marketing, with new-worn jeans and marked-up furniture. We tag this as recycled and call ourselves retro. Recycling doesn't exist in the wabi-sabi world. My attempts at converting Tucker's ball into sheet-plastic via the recycle box, have been met with prompt retrieval by digging paws and slobbering jaw. In wabi-sabi, decay replaces conversion. [Would be interesting to note the similarity(') to the modern Western countercultural aesthetic of worn and torn blue jeans and recycled vintage clothing and furniture.] As Buddhist poet and musician Leonard Cohen observes in his song "Anthem," "There's a crack in everything; that's how the light gets in." In life, rain and ice may crack and erode the new and the beautiful, but the crumbling marks they leave behind are the signature of water, the ultimate life-giver. Thus, wabi-sabi doesn't simply see the silver lining in every cloud, it sees the cloud itself as a silver lining in a perfect blue sky. ......
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