Harmony, Respect, Purity, and Tranquility

My Sado supplies

Harmony, respect, purity, and tranquility. According to Sen Rikyu, this is the spiritual code of the way of tea. Recently, one of my students kindly introduced me to his mother's former tea ceremony student, who is now a tea ceremony teacher herself. After having an extremely positive first meeting and sample lesson I've decided to continue to meet with her on Tuesday mornings. Having zero background knowledge of tea ceremony (aka Sado, Chado, or Chanoyu) and what it involves, I had little idea what to expect when I headed out for my first lesson. It turns out I was quite taken by my first experience.

Sado is much more than the act of drinking and enjoying tea. It incorporates many aspects of Japanese traditions and culture, and places emphasis on the appreciation of natural beauty in the surrounding environment, be it the tearoom or an outdoor setting. Tea ceremony encompasses an appreciation for the whole process of preparing, serving, and enjoying tea and okashi (accompanying sweets - more on this later). This includes taking the time to appreciate the the surrounding environment of the tea room, the decorations chosen by the host to reflect both the season and their consideration for their guest's tastes, and the utensils used to prepare, serve, and enjoy tea. In fact, from what I've thus far absorbed, the act of drinking the tea is but a small aspect of the tea ceremony experience.

In order to supplement some of the finer details that I'm sometimes unable fully grasp during my lessons (my sensei only speaks to me in Japanese), I've been reading some texts my Sensei lent me. They cover both the required steps and procedures, as well as the history of Sado. While I'd been under the initial assumption that tea ceremony was traditionally a woman's calling, I've learned that it had been predominantly practiced by men for hundreds of years, and it wasn't until after the war that tea ceremony became more comonly practiced by women ( I read a statistic that claimed about 80% female to male practitioners world-wide). Initiated by Zen monks, Sado was later picked up by the upper class in later years, followed by wealthy merchants and nobility further on, and finally spread to common people in more recent times.

Shuko (also pronounced Juko) Murata, a widely influential figure in the history of Japanese tea ceremony who has been regarded as a major contributor to way in which tea ceremony is preformed today, claimed "once one enters the tearoom, any discrimination between oneself and others vanishes, the virtue of gentleness prevails, and a new mutual enjoyment can be found." I think this quote, although perhaps a bit lost in translation, has helped me to realize what the spiritual experience that is meant to accompany the tea ceremony is really all about. Unfortunately, right now I feel as though I'm too caught up in performing the necessary steps and procedures properly, which leaves me with little room to fully enjoy and experience the moment for what it is. I hope this is something that will come to me over time as I become more familiar with the practice and things start to feel more natural.

I just finished watching a really interesting episode of Mark of Beauty on NHK World that focused on Nodate - outdoor tea ceremony. It explained the importance of the thoughtfulness behind the choice of utensils and decorations used in tea ceremony and how these are to be chosen to reflect both the current season and the tastes of the guests. It also discussed how to incorporate integral pieces of the tea room to an out door setting. Nodate would be a great way to practice tea ceremony back home where it would be much more difficult to create a space that reflects the tea room atmosphere in my home.

Pictures to come!