Yanagi Sōetsu

If a man knows not and knows not that he knows not, shum him (is a fool)

If a man knows not and knowns he knows not, awaken him (is asleep)

If a man knows and knows that he knows, follow him (is wise)

Seeing and knowing

• First, put aside the desire to judge immediately; acquire the habit of looking. Second, do not treat the object as an object for the intellect. Third, just be ready to receive, passively, whiteout interposing yourself. If you can void your mind of all intellectualisation, like a clear mirror that simply reflects, all the better. This non-conceptualization — the Zen state of mushin (no mind) — may seem to represent a negative attitude, but from it springs the true ability to contact things directly and positively.
• The relationship between beauty in the crafts and pattern is particularly profound.
• When we simplify something, we can realize how simplification involves a return to the world of numbers.

Irregularity

• Kazuko Okakura calls it "the art of imperfection". The shapes are irregular, the surfaces dry or sandy [...] fire cracks are accepted. All these characteristics are not merely put up with, but are taken as an integral part of pot making and are therefore of potential beauty. The Tea masters found depth in this naturalness.
• The precise and perfect carries no overtones, admits no freedom; the perfect is static and regulated, cold and hard; [...] Freedom, indeed, is beauty. ★
• The asymmetric principle contains the seed of the highest form of beauty known to man.
• The Sung pottery are performed by boys around the age of ten. No one sign the objects. Each child had to draw the same picture hundreds of times a day. This Repetition produced an amazing dexterity, and a quickness of hand. Hesitation had no place in it; neither had anxiety or ambition. ★
• The reason we can find nothing to dislike in the drawings made by children is that in them the inherent nature of man finds expression without being thwarted or frustrated.
• Western people seem to be repelled by roughness and more attracted by the finished, the smooth, and the regular. The development of Western science might be attributed to this same love of the precise. The Oriental, conversely, seeks the natural, the irregular, and the free, a tendency that finds natural expression in things such as hakame.

<aside> 📕 Hamada has two kilns, one is small, the other large. The latter is so large that it can contain about ten thousand pots. When he built it, someone asked him: "Why do you need such a large kiln?"

If a kiln is small, I might be able to control it completely, my own self can become a controller, a master of the kiln. When I work at the large kiln, the power of my own self becomes so feeble that it cannot control it. It means the power beyond me is necessary. Without the mercy of such invisible power I cannot get good pieces.

</aside>