Cold Water Jar by Nishimura Tokusen-san

I’m writing this on the homeward bound bus, on a piece of kaishi, washi paper used for sweets in Tea.  On my way to tea lesson I ran into Kobayashi-sensei on the street, wearing his black robes and a gold colored brimless hat.  He had lived a cloistered life of Zen training for 15 years before coming to Daitokuji in 1978.  His eyes shine like black coals.  His gaze is intense and he speaks in a warm, gruff way.  “Come see me sometime soon,” he said in his usual disarming, vulnerable honesty.

Tonight’s tea lesson involved an underglaze blue and white porcelain cold water jar on the botton shelf of a black lacquer stand.  When it was my turn to prepare tea, I easily made my full quote of silly mistakes, under the strict, yet always forgiving eyes of my teacher.  It was like being pre-forgiven before I even began.

The wet sweet we shared was shiro-an molded into the shape of a chestnut, with chestnut filling.  Shiro-an is a puree of white beans and sugar, but tastes more like a very light, semi-sweet frosting for adults.  Tonight’s dry sweet was an alchemical concoction of sugar, vegetable gelatin and air.  It melted before I could chew it.

It was raining slightly when I walked through the temple complex on my way home.  I could hear the echo of the fire alert monitor clacking wooden sticks together and his sing-song voice calling out for all to be careful with their cooking and heating fires.

At the bus stop, two minutes before I began to compose this blog on kaishi, I played “Japanese stand-off” with an elderly man, where we each smiled and motioned to the other to board the bus first.

Tea bowl by Takemoto Ikuo

Our Tea teacher is a true, classic Japanese gentleman.  He knows how to create a candle-lit Tea event to celebrate the October full moon; he can prepare a bowl of offertory Tea, placing it on the altar of a Shinto Shrine; he can organize season-specific, three-hour Tea events for dozens of people in a way that is gracious and seemingly effortless.  Most of all, he can talk about Tea and even excite already knowledgeable people. And for those with no knowledge of Tea, he can create a warm and safe place and inspire them with his unique enthusiasm for beauty in-the-moment.

The Way of Tea was laid out by Sen no Rikyu in the late 1500’s.  He introduced the concepts of wabi and sabi into the Japanese mindset.  He turned the aesthetics of Japan from focus on the perfection of Chinese arts into a culture that valued rusticity, patina, asymmetry and understated beauty.  He pared down the previously popular, aristocratic Chinese-style of tea party and combined it with the way Zen monks communally share roughhewn bowls of whisked tea before meditation.  In so doing, he created a secular way to incorporate Zen teachings into everyday life.  Practitioners of Tea study the arts and become connoisseurs of Japan’s innumerable ceramic styles, bamboo flower baskets, ikebana, ink painting and calligraphy, lacquer ware and food presentation.  They then learn how to masterfully blend the right combination of implements with the right combination of guests into stunning tea events.  By learning dozens of meticulously orchestrated variations of the “performance of tea” for guests, they develop focus, mind-fullness and gracefulness that can then be applied to their everyday lives.

When I first began studying Tea, I assumed that I would master the basics in about a year.  Now, three years later, I find myself only beginning to understand what Tea is about.