Talk:Wabi-sabi

message: It appears the article in its previous form was a word-for-word copy of text in the unt.edu link under external links.  I've deleted that text from the article and left it here.  Sadly, I've labelled this article a stub now until more can be written under the GFDL.  All I had time to contribute is an additional quoted definition and a couple of book references. --Ds13 05:44, 2005 Mar 31 (UTC)
:removed, apparently plagarized, text... (from http://www.art.unt.edu/ntieva/artcurr/asian/wabisabi.html)
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:Wabi-sabi is the beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.
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:It is the beauty of things modest and humble.
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:It is the beauty of things unconventional.
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:The concepts of wabi-sabi correlate with the concepts of Zen, as the first Japanese involved with wabi-sabi were tea masters, priests, and monks who practiced Zen. Zen was first introduced from China around the 12th century. It emphasizes "direct, intuitive insight into transcendental truth beyond all intellectual conception." At the core of wabi-sabi is the importance of transcending ways of looking and thinking about things/existence.
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:* All things are impermanent
:* All things are imperfect
:* All things are incomplete
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:Material characteristics of wabi-sabi:
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:* suggestion of natural process
:* irregular
:* intimate
:* unpretentious
:* earthy
:* simple
:</i>
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Can someone check that the Kanji for Wabi-sabi in is correct ?
I suspect that sabi should be the Kanji for rust, patina and not the one for sadness, loneliness. 
--82.249.64.130 20:20, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Plagarism deleted; contributions needed!

message: Wabi, which redirects to this article was also the name to a Windows 3.x emulator by Sun Microsystems. -- Darklock 10:43, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Windows 3.x emulator

message: The last line of the intro paragraph states: A concept derived from the Buddhist assertion of the first noble truth - Dukkha.  This seems like a reasonable theory, but is there a citation or other evidence for this? --Ds13 09:44, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Claim of origin?

message: Dukkha has little to do with impermanence, but rather it means pain, suffering, or hardship. I am not sure about the Japanese term, but as it stands it is incorrect to liken Dukkha to impermenance. Please edit the first paragraph accordingly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.151.137.187 (talk • contribs) 
:First, please sign your comments. Thanks for the feedback. From the Dukkha article:
::Although dukkha is often translated as "suffering", it has a deeper philosophical meaning. It also contains in addition deeper ideas such as "imperfection", "impermanence", "emptiness" and "insubstantiality". "Suffering" is too narrow a translation and it is best to leave dukkha untranslated [1] [2] [3] [4].
:Several cites are given for this claim.  I think it's a good idea to add "suffering" and several other words to the translation in the first paragraph. These things are fuzzy. --Ds13 23:41, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The word for "mujo" (impermanence) is anitya (Sanskrit) or anicca (Pali). "Dukkha" is usually translated to "ku" (suffering). Impermanence and suffering are standard English terms used in Buddhism, and should be treated as such in this context. Also, as this article is on a Japanese notion, Buddhist notions may be better treated in the Japanese Buddhist way. Yuji 04:05, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dukkha 

message: This BBC documentary is mentioned in the section on "Western Use". Is it possible to indicate that there are some serious problems with this show? I have the feeling evaluation is not exactly appropriate to wikipedia but there are several ways in which this documentary will only serve to confuse and delude. Theroux would have made a much better documentary if he had spent 5 minutes reading just this brief wikipedia entry before he wandered aimlessly around Japan inflicting his ignorance and stereotypes on several patient Japanese. Boaby (talk) 17:15, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticism of Marcel Theroux's BBC documentary Wabi Sabi 

message: As a student of Karate and the Japanese language for many years, I have never come across this term and I can find nothing in this article that makes me believe that Karate exemplifies Wabi-sabi. I think there needs to be some reasoning behind this otherwise almost anything Japanese could be given as an example of Wabi-sabi. Kegon (talk) 09:38, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I tend to agree. It prompted me to Google the coincidence of the two, and the results are unconvincing. Removed it. Someone can feel free to add it back pending other findings. --Rhododendrites (talk) 13:57, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wabi-sabi in Japanese arts 

message: This article is a fine, well-informed, exposition of what wabi and sabi are about.  They are two separate ideas, and their contraposition is a third.
 
It is perhaps a little brutal in its generality. The opening sentence, "Wabi-sabi (侘寂?) represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection." is a pompous load of codswallop.  I use the technical term we aestheticians apply in these cases.
 
Wabi and sabi are two common terms used in discussion of the various Zen Buddhist aesthetics.  Aesthetics here is the plural.  Zen has been around for a long time, and has many different manifestations.  Neither wabi no sabi would come up immediately in describing the art of quenching a red-hot sword blade in a condemned criminal. They might be used in discussion the sword once it had cooled. 
Others of equal or greater importance include Kanso (簡素) simplicity or elimination of clutter; Fukinsei (不均整) asymmetry or irregularity; Shibui/Shibumi (渋味) beautiful by being understated, or by being precisely what it was meant to be and not elaborated upon;  Shizen (自然) naturalness; Datsuzoku (脱俗) freedom from habit or formula; and Seijaku (静寂) tranquility or an energized calm (quite), stillness, solitude.  (Definitions by the excellent Garr Reynolds.) 
This is just one of several Japanese realms of taste, and is the subject of ongoing discussion at Reynolds' fine blog, http://www.presentationzen.com. 
Others, quite apart from Japanese adaptations of, e.g., French romanticism or Russian futurism, would have to include "totally goofy bubble-gum culture," 完全に間抜けなバブルガム文化, a modernism. Many other terms, as significant as goofy, wabi, or sabi, will turn up in a Google search on Japanese aesthetics.  
 
To be charitable, the writer of this article just wandered in, and has correctly described two significant words.  
Of many.
David Lloyd-Jones (talk) 18:26, 6 December 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I think this criticism reeks of cultural elitism. There are two fundamentally different concepts:  (1) What does wabi-sabi mean to Japanese cultural elites and academicians? (2) What does wabi-sabi mean to the broad population of Japan? If you are going to spin off into cultural elitism, you can endlessly criticize any description of wabi-sabi. But I would argue that this article should explain what wabi-sabi means to the broad population of Japan, not to some purist cultural elites. The average Japanese person does indeed think of wabi-sabi together, and the opening sentence is the best description I have ever seen about how the common Japanese person thinks of wabi-sabi. People come to Wikipedia to know what concepts generally mean in every-day life, not what some minute cultural elite thinks words ought to mean. This article serves the purpose of Wikipedia perfectly. --Westwind273 (talk) 18:25, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ahem.  A gentle cough... 

message: Hello, this aesthetic is very important to me and I want to improve the article. 
I'm planning to add information about the history of wabi-sabi especially related to it's development, Sen no Rikyū, and why it remains culturally significant to the Japanese people today (tea ceremony, kintsugi, calligraphy, poetry, architecture, etc.) and why it is worthy of study. More specifically, I want to add more detailed information about how it is actually used in Japanese arts instead of just having a bunch of links to other pages. I'm also planning to restructure the section about “Western Use” to be more about how wabi-sabi has influenced other cultures because as it stands the information there is not very good, pretty outdated, and just mentions a few ways that wabi-sabi has been, I guess, interpreted and “used” by the West. I think it's more important to look at it from the perspective of how the West may have been inspired by the ideas of wabi-sabi and not that it is not something that can really be "Used" in the way the article currently explains. 
I'm starting to build a bibliography for my edits:
Wabi Sabi: The Japanese Art of Impermanence, by Andrew Juniper (Tuttle Publishing, Nov. 15, 2003)
Wabi Sabi: The Wisdom in Imperfection by Nobuo Suzuki (Tuttle Publishing, Apr. 6, 2021)
A History of Modern Japanese Aesthetics by Michele Marra (University of Hawaii Press, Feb. 2001)
Wabi Sabi Suki: The Esssence of Japanese Beauty by Itoh Teiji (Mazda Motor Corporation, 1993)
The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura (Applewood Books, 2008)
I may also do some translation from the Japanese version of the article  Zeroedge0 (talk) 00:35, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Plans to edit this article