Chado Association of Philadelphia

Kimono Season

2011-12-28T18:46:00.001-05:00

Tea lessons are done for the year, and we’re on our annual New Year’s break, visiting family and preparing for our first tea of the New Year (Hatsugama), which we hold in late January.

One of the things I’ve been trying to do during this time is get caught up on altering my kimonos. I’ve talked before about wearing kimonos for tea ceremony, how the tea ceremony was designed to be done in kimono, and even today we practice certain moves and hand positions specifically to accommodate the wearing of kimonos. At the Urasenke head school in Japan (either Midorikai, which is for foreigners, or Gakuen, which is for Japanese), even beginning students are required to wear kimonos every day. Outside of Japan, customs vary by tea group; in our group, students are not required to wear a kimono to class (although some choose to), and those who have kimonos will usually wear them to gatherings like Hatsugama. I always wear a kimono when I teach, and of course to gatherings and demonstrations, so I need kimonos for a variety of different occasions.

This is one of those occasions where theory and practice collide. In theory, every kimono I own should be custom-made for me so that it fits properly. In practice, to get a kimono custom-made for you costs anywhere from several hundred dollars (if you have a friend in the business who gives you a huge discount) to several thousand dollars (middle range; of course, a high-quality kimono can cost a lot more). On the other hand, you can buy a used kimono with little or no visible signs of wear for under a hundred dollars.

Now I am – shall we say, a tad cubby? Pleasantly plump? Or, as my sensei never hesitates to remind me, in need of some serious dieting? Let’s just say that my body type is far different from most Japanese women. So while I’m short enough that I have little trouble finding a kimono long enough for me, anything I buy needs to be widened before I can wear it properly. This is actually not difficult at all; in fact, kimonos are designed to be easy to widen, and when they’re made there’s usually plenty of extra fabric in the side seams. However, it’s pretty time-consuming, especially with lined kimonos, because they’ve got an extra layer of fabric on the inside that also needs to be resewn. It’s a good winter activity, with it being so cold and dark outside, and it’s always nice to be able to add another kimono to my “wearable” pile. (I probably have about 40 kimonos at this point, but a lot of them still need to be altered.)

Hope you’re enjoying your winter projects too!

Robiraki

2011-11-27T16:32:00.006-05:00

We had our Robiraki gathering, celebrating the beginning of the winter season, at the beginning of November. (Yes, I’m a little late posting… but look, photos!)

As with previous gatherings, we met at the Horticultural Center meeting room, which is far from being a traditional setting for tea, but in November the weather is so uncertain that we wanted to be sure everyone has a warm and dry place to enjoy their tea. As it turned out, the day itself was beautiful, sunny and warm, and there were still a lot of leaves on the trees, so it made for some beautiful scenery as people were coming in.

We were also very lucky to have a number of friends from different places join us for the gathering, including a group from New Jersey, some students from Penn State who are working on setting up a tea ceremony program at their school, and of course a number of tea people from our local area. We had sixteen guests in all, which made it one of the largest single gatherings we’d ever done! Luckily, we also had some great help in the kitchen, which is really the key to making everything run smoothly.

For this gathering, we served a meal as well as koicha (thick tea) and usucha (thin tea). The main part of the meal consisted of rice, sashimi, and seasonal foods in a bento box, and we also served soup with grilled tofu:

Because we weren’t in a traditional tea space, we had to improvise in a number of ways, one of which was to put the machiai (where the guests gather before going into the room) in one of the greenhouse spaces. Usually the machiai has a hanging scroll and a flower arrangement; there was no place to hang a scroll, but we put a flower arrangement on the path that guests would take to the meeting room, where we had put down tatami mats and set up an alcove space with a scroll:

In the tatami space we had a tana, which in this photo is set up in preparation for laying the charcoal fire. This is a Ryuseidana, and if you look closely you can see that the gridwork on the left side is made from used handles from hishakus (the ladles we use to scoop water). The mizusashi (cold water jar) on the bottom is a black Oribe-style, and on the top of the tana is a feather (used to brush stray ash from the sides of the hearth) and an incense container. The incense container was made by Saeda Makoto, one of the artists who exhibited at the Five by Eight exhibition in Philadelphia last month.

In this picture, Drew Hanson, one of our teachers, is making usucha for the guests:

All in all, it was a wonderful day, and as always we hope that the guests enjoyed it too!

Meeting the Artists

2011-10-12T23:48:00.001-04:00

This past weekend our tea group had a gathering with a group of Japanese ceramic artists who are having a show here. So first I need to plug the show, which is called Five by Eight – five featured pieces from eight different artists – at The Clay Studio on 2^nd Street in Philadelphia. They all have very different, very contemporary styles… here’s a link to the exhibition, where you can see photos.

On Saturday, the exhibition organizer, Makiko Maki, arranged with Taeko Shervin-sensei do to a tea ceremony exchange of sorts – one of the artists in the exhibition would do tea for us, and we would do tea for the group. They very kindly brought their pieces to use – two or three teabowls from each artist (none of which were in the exhibition, so we got an exclusive look), plus a ceramic natsume (tea container), mizusashi (cold water container), and kensui. One of the most impressive things to me – in a long line of impressive things – was that the brazier that held the fire (furo) and the kettle for the water (kama) were also ceramic. Ordinarily they would be metal, particularly the kettle, and they’re fairly big – the furo was probably about 15 inches in diameter and the kama was made to sit on top of it, so maybe 9-10 inches in diameter. It must have been hard to make something that fit together so perfectly.

The tea was a treat to watch because the person who did it was from the Sohen-ryu school, one that doesn’t have a huge presence outside Japan and one that I’d personally never seen before. The host was very skilled, and it was so interesting to see the differences.

The bowls were amazing, of course. They brought bowls out from the kitchen so that everybody had their own, and once we drank the tea we passed them around so everyone could have a look. The main bowl (the one that the host used to prepare tea) had overlapping geometric shapes that looked a bit like a checkerboard; the second bowl was white with a pattern of autumn grasses in orange. The others varied from a sculptural white bowl to a couple with a highly textured black finish, and probably the most popular one was a bowl with a light blue-green, translucent ash glaze.

(I know, you’re probably saying, “Where are the photos?” I’m so sorry, I don’t have any – if I get some, I will post them.)

It was a beautiful day all the way around, and I’m so grateful to all of the artists involved, and especially Maki-san, who worked so hard to make this and the exhibition itself happen.

Tea by Moonlight

2011-09-14T23:39:00.001-04:00

On Sunday I got to do something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time – tea under the full moon.

This is one of a set of three traditional outdoor tea ceremonies: One for cherry blossom viewing in the spring, one for the first snowfall, and one for the full moon in the autumn. Even though there’s a special temae (tea ceremony) dedicated specifically to doing tea during this full moon, and we practice the form, our group rarely ever actually does it for real. The last time I did it, it wasn’t a formal gathering; Shofuso was having a moon-viewing party, and my teacher spontaneously brought a tea set and had tea while the party was going on. It was so beautiful that I decided I was going to do one myself someday, but it’s been many years in the making!

So when my fellow teacher Drew agreed that we should go for it, I researched when the full moon was happening, when the moon would rise, the time of sunset, etc. Sunset time was particularly crucial because Shofuso (which, in case you haven’t seen it yourself, is a replica of the 16^th century Japanese house) has electricity but no interior lights, so we wanted to get the bulk of the work done before it got so dark we would need artificial lighting.

I was a little bit nervous the day of because, first of all, I had a minor crisis with the sweets I was planning to make -- one of the key ingredients was nowhere to be found at any of our local Asian grocery stores, and the alternatives I tried weren’t working. Thankfully, my fallback plan worked, and I was able to come to the gathering bearing little mochi bunny rabbits.

The other wild card was the weather. They were calling for thunderstorms that evening, and it was ominously cloudy early in the day, but we really lucked out. In late afternoon it cleared up, and by the time the gathering started at 7:30, the moon was just peeking over the treeline! Shofuso is fortuitously oriented so that the main part of the veranda, overlooking the koi pond, is facing east, so by the time the tea was over the moon was high in the sky and reflecting beautifully off the pond.

The gathering itself was small, and we had a great group of guests. Some of them were volunteers at Shofuso who had seen us do demonstrations and classes, but never had time to sit and drink tea with us, and it was a lot of fun to be able to serve them tea and answer their questions.

In the end, I think everyone had a good time, which in tea is the most important thing. I’m really psyched to do it again next year!

The Rain in September

2011-09-06T23:42:00.000-04:00

Between Hurricane Irene last week and another day-long storm blowing through today, we’ve been getting hit with a lot of rain lately, and it made me think about rain in the context of tea. There’s the obvious angle, of course – it’s nice to have a bowl of hot tea on a wet day. But there are also a lot of seasonal variations on rain. For example, there are gentle showers in the spring, and afternoon thunderstorms in the summer, and in this area there are the tropical storms that blow up the coast starting in August.

Looking through my tea books, I found a great word – nowake. It literally means “field dividing,” meaning a wind that blows through a field and divides the crops. Here, for your wet weather enjoyment, are a couple of poems:

Inoshishi mo

Tomo ni fukaruru

Nowaki kana

Even the wild boars

Are blown away by the autumn storm

Diligence is needed

-- Basho

Oharame ya

Nowaki ni mukau

Kakae-obi

Female peddlers from Ohara [Kyoto]

Have hitched up their kimonos

To do battle against nowake

-- Sonojo

Trying Too Hard?

2011-08-04T23:58:00.002-04:00

How Japanese do you have to be to study tea ceremony? It’s a question that pops up from time to time – at least for me, and I suspect for other tea ceremony practitioners as well.

On the face of it, it’s a simple question. There’s nothing about the mechanics of tea ceremony that limit it to any one nationality or ethnicity. Anyone can learn the movements, and I’ve seen people of all ages and backgrounds relate to the philosophy. It’s something that touches all types of people, and that’s a beautiful thing to watch.

But there’s another aspect to it, which is that tea ceremony comes wrapped in Japanese culture like a ball of sweet bean paste wrapped in mochi. The two of them look like two distinct things, but try to separate them and things get sticky. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve made some horrible social faux pas because of some aspect of Japanese culture I just wasn’t familiar with. The discussion from my last post about teachers made me think of it – one time, as a tea student, I ran into another student who went to Urasenke New York, and innocently suggested that she should come and take lessons with us, too, which (I now know) is a horrible breach of tea etiquette.

I think that people who tend to be attracted to tea ceremony are very aware of this gap, and for the most part work hard to be respectful and to follow the rules, written and unwritten. I’ve been thinking about that recently, too. At the intensive a few weeks ago, I observed one of the students, an American who had been studying tea for a long time. She was very deferential to the teachers, and very respectful, but as I watched her interact with them, it occurred to me that she was almost too deferential – to the point where she was making the teachers a little uncomfortable. It forms a social barrier that can become a barrier to learning.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that being respectful to one’s teachers is very important, and I’ve also seen situations where a student was being so informal with a teacher that is was bordering on outright disrespect. Courtesy is important, and sometimes being paranoid that you’re breaking some rule that you never knew existed is appropriate, because you are.

I think this instance really struck me because I saw myself in that student – times when I’ve tried too hard to compensate for the fact that I’m not Japanese, like I don’t want to be one of “those” Americans who comes in and acts in a completely offensive and insensitive way. Looking back, I can think of times I’ve probably made my teachers and others uncomfortable because I was overdoing the courtesy to the point that it was a distraction.

The reality is, I’m not Japanese, and I will probably never know all of the rules that are second nature to Japanese people. To a large extent, I don’t think they expect me to, just as most Americans don’t expect foreigners to understand every nuance of American language and culture. But that doesn’t stop me from psyching myself out sometimes, and I think that it’s a problem for many Americans who pursue Japanese cultural activities.

Having thought all of this, the conclusion I came to is that the real lesson is one that tea practice teaches us – don’t spend so much time and energy worrying about yourself that you forget about other people. Relax, focus on what’s right in front of you, be open to your surroundings, and act from your heart.

Getting Intense about Tea

2011-07-04T00:24:00.001-04:00

Recently I was at an intensive tea study (koshukai in Japanese) held at the New York branch of our tea school, Urasenke. They have these frequently in Kyoto, at Urasenke’s headquarters, but this is the first time that there’s ever been one in North America. It was a really fantastic opportunity to come together with tea people from all over the country and hone our skills.

Urasenke headquarters sent two high-level teachers (gyotei senseis) to lead the seminar. One of them, Izumimoto sensei, had come to New York twice before to lead seminars. The difference is that in previous seminars, there was a large group of people who, with a few exceptions, were listening to lectures or observing while only a few people participated in lessons. At this intensive, we were broken into groups of five or six, and we were all give multiple opportunities to take lessons, including one session with each of the gyotei senseis. The other classes were taught by the heads of the North American branches of Urasenke, including two of the teachers from New York.

So what do you do at a tea intensive? The first day, all twenty-six of us were in the same room, and the training was in warigeiko, which are the basic movements of tea ceremony – the first thing that a beginner would learn when they start taking lessons in tea. Now mind you, many of the people who were taking part in the intensive were teachers in their own right; some of them have been doing tea ceremony for 20 or 30 years or more. Why start at the beginning?

Someone who studies any type of art knows that every once in a while you have to go back to basics to refine your technique, and that’s especially true of tea ceremony. Even after sixteen years of study, I’m constantly learning new things, even about the very basics, and I’m really grateful to have that opportunity. Because just like any art, there’s no standing still – if you’re not getting better, you’re going backward.

After the first day, we broke up into our separate groups, and for the next two and a half days, we spent each morning and afternoon with a different teacher. We were given a general category for each class – for example, “hakobi,” which is a type of basic temae (procedure for making tea). Within that category, students could choose what they wanted to study; of course, the teacher could tell you to do something different, but in my class that didn’t happen. It was good, because it gave people a chance to study in advance. That may sound odd, because isn’t the point of lessons to learn how to do something? But in intensives like this, the teachers assume that you’re already familiar with the temae you’re studying. The purpose of the lesson is to make sure that you have all the details straight – sometimes, especially with the more obscure temae that we don’t practice very often, there are small details that we forget – and also to check your form. I’ve found that every teacher has a specialty, so to speak – they’ll pick out problems with your movements or technique that other teachers might not notice. And the gyotei senseis, of course, are the best of all for things like that.

Going into the intensive I was really a bundle of nerves, worried about making mistakes or embarrassing myself even more than I usually do. But one thing that surprised and impressed me was that the gyoteis were actually very nice. Not that they weren’t strict, and sometimes they can be harsh in their comments, but for the most part they were very patient, and really focused on helping people learn.

At the end of the day I think the biggest single lesson I learned was that the way you do temae is a choice. There are certain small points that very from teacher to teacher; one person will tell you to do it this way, and another will tell you something different. At the beginning level, this can be really confusing, and it’s one reason why students are not allowed to jump from teacher to teacher. But if you’ve been practicing for a while, going to an intensive like this gives you a chance to see the way that other teachers do things, and to think about your own temae and what works. Sometimes a correction is a correction, and you really need to fix your movement. And in the context of a lesson, no matter what, you do what the teacher says. But sometimes, when a teacher tells you to do something differently from the way you learned it, it’s up to you to figure out which way to go. It’s trickier than a simple correction, but worth the effort.

A Great Day for a Great Cause

2011-06-20T23:33:00.001-04:00

Yesterday our tea group held a benefit for the earthquake victims of Sendai, Japan. Even though it’s been several months since the tsunami hit that region, the cleanup continues, and the people are still struggling to put their lives back in order. More than 23,000 people died as a result of the earthquakes and the tsunami, and countless more were affected. It’s hard to comprehend the scope of the tragedy, and even though our efforts were pretty small in comparison to what needs to be done, we were happy to be able to do something – particularly for the people of Sendai, who have been so generous to us in the past.

We did six sittings total – three for thin tea (usucha) in the 15-mat room that looks out over the garden, and three more thick tea (koicha) in the actual tearoom, which is 4 ½ mats including the alcove (tokonoma). In my mind, I’m seeing some of the people from the large Urasenke branches who do tea for hundreds of people in a single day saying, “Ha! That’s nothing!” But for us, it was a big day.

The credit for putting everything together goes to Taeko Shervin sensei, who came up with this idea back in March and has spent the past couple of months putting everything together, including making all of the sweets herself (a hundred each of two different kinds of dry sweets for thin tea and 50 moist sweets for koicha; her friend Wada-san also made dry sweets for us). But the staff at the Japanese House, where the benefit was held, also deserve a lot of thanks for all their hard work in making it happen. They really helped to promote it, and of course did a lot of work getting the house ready and managing all the visitors.

People were so generous, it really blew us away. There was one man from a tattoo shop in Philadelphia who raised $2,300 for tsunami victims, but wasn’t sure what to do with it; when he heard about this event he decided to give the money to this fund. There was also a little girl who, on her birthday, asked people to donate for the tsunami victims rather than getting presents; she brought her money to the event too.

At the end of the day, there were about 250 people who came through the house (though not all of them had tea; there was an artist named Aaron Mannino who did an art installation on the house grounds, and there were a number of visitors who came specifically to see that), and the event raised about $7,000, including donations that came in from people who couldn’t make it on that day.

To everyone who helped and everyone who came, thank you so much!

Tea Ceremony Benefit for Japan

2011-06-02T21:54:00.001-04:00

Apologies for the late notice, but please spread the word to anyone that you think might be interested:

The people of Sendai have had a close relationship with the Japanese community of Philadelphia for many years. Sendai is known as Mori no Mikyo, the City of Trees, because of the large number of trees within its city limits -- something it shares with Philadelphia, which has more parks within its city borders than any city in the United States.

Volunteer groups from Sendai have helped to raise money to repair and maintain the roof at Shofuso, the Japanese House and Gardens in Fairmount Park, and many times have come to Philadelphia to help celebrate Tanabata, the Milky Way festival in July.

In honor of this relationship, and to express our deep sympathy for their suffering following the earthquakes and tsunami in Japan, the Chado Association of Philadelphia is hosting a benefit tea ceremony, with proceeds going directly to the people of Sendai.

Date: Sunday, June 19th (Father's Day)
Time: Seatings for usucha (thin tea) at 12:00, 1:30, and 3:00 p.m.
Seatings for koicha (thick tea) at 11:30, 1:30, and 3:00 p.m.
Location: Shofuso, the Japanese House and Gardens in Fairmount Park
Horticultural and Lansdowne Drives, Philadelphia, PA
Fee: $25 for Shofuso members; $30 for non-members. Additional donations are gratefully accepted.

Reservations are recommended. To register, visit www.shofuso.com or call 215-878-5097

The Fallen Blossom

2011-05-03T23:45:00.002-04:00

I recently read a tea story from the early seventeenth century in Japan. There was a priest at the Daitokuji temple in Kyoto who happened to see a particularly beautiful camellia blossom in the garden, and he decided to send it to his friend, the tea master Sen Sotan. He carefully picked the flower and gave it to one of his disciples, with strict instructions to handle the gift carefully on his way to Sotan’s residence. Despite the messenger’s best efforts, however, the blossom fell off of the stem before he could give it to Sotan.

The messenger wondered what to do, and finally decided to take the flower and its stem to Sotan and offer his abject apologies. Sotan accepted both the apologies and the gift. Instead of throwing the flower away, he placed the stem in a hanging vase on the pillar of the tokonoma (the alcove where the scroll is usually hung and a vase of flowers is arranged), and he placed the blossom beneath the vase as if it had fallen there naturally.

As I read this story, it reminded me of a time when I was in my teacher’s tearoom during a lesson, and I noticed that the head had fallen off one of the flowers in the tokonoma; it was lying there, under the vase. There was something really profound about the visual impact of that. I was still thinking about it after I went home, and I even wrote a little poem about it. But it’s really hard to put that feeling into words.

I think that it says something about the transitory nature of life – it’s not a bud, with all the potential of life; it’s not a flower in full gorgeous bloom. It’s come to the end of its existence; no longer an object of admiration, but something that most people would toss into the trash. The moment when the blossom falls is a moment of transition, and I think Sotan was trying to convey, with his action, that that moment is when we should be paying the most attention. There’s beauty in all moments, in all phases of existence, in endings as well as beginnings. If tea is about noticing things and feeling things, then surely the moment when the flower falls is a crucial moment to capture.

Sakura Time!

2011-04-21T00:14:00.005-04:00

The past couple of weeks we’ve been caught up in cherry blossom (sakura) time. The weekend of April 9^th we had our usual demonstration at Shofuso, the Japanese House, and then the following day was Sakura Sunday, the big celebration in Fairmount Park. The timing was absolutely perfect – the blossoms were just coming into bloom. Here’s a view from one of the main plantings of cherry trees:

We didn’t have a formal demonstration that day, but one of our students, Mary Lynn, set up under one of the cherry trees and did chabako, a picnic-style tea, for anyone who happened to stop by and want some tea. …

The following week, we had another tea gathering, this time for members of the Chado Association. This was something new for us – even though chabako is especially designed to be done outdoors, we rarely plan outdoor gatherings for logistical reasons. Even for a simple tea, when you’re serving a dozen people there’s a fair amount of stuff to carry out to the site, and of course you have to plan for rain or other contingencies. I’m very happy to say that the weather was mostly good. “Mostly” in that it was sunny and reasonably warm, but it was also very windy, which made it a little on the chilly side and caused some complications in making the tea.

There were little things – for example, the tea whisk kept blowing over – and then there were the messy things: every time I opened the lid of the tea container, a gust of wind came up and blew a cloud of powdered tea all over the place. The tray with the tea items was a mess!

However, the really important thing in any tea gathering is that the guests have fun and enjoy each other’s company, and on that score I think it was a success – everybody seemed to have a good time, and we got to see some old friends we hadn’t talked to in a while.

Here’s a picture of us under the cherry trees:

(This, by the way, is the same place Sakura Sunday is held.)

Even though we look like we’re all alone in the photo above, there were actually a fair number of people in the park, and as I walked around before and after I got a lot of questions about what we were doing. That’s another fun thing about doing an outdoor gathering – we get to talk to people about tea ceremony, and maybe share some things with them that they didn’t know before. All in all, it was a good day.

Our Fame Spreads...

2011-04-05T00:09:00.002-04:00

Last August, a film crew from a site called Tokyo Pop came to Shofuso to do some filming for a show they were doing called America’s Greatest Otaku. I had never heard of the site before, but I was assured that this was just because I’m very old. They were in Philadelphia looking for Japanese-themed places and events, and their search led them to Shofuso. They did some filming and interviews with the site manager at the time, with a local taiko drumming group called Kyo Daiko, and with us, your faithful tea people.

The filming was fun – they had two young people in the tearoom with us; I made the tea, and one of our students, Mary Lynn, acted as first guest and coached them on how to drink. (She did a great job and actually did quite a bit of talking, although they ended up not using much of her in the final cut.) After the temae was finished, they did a short interview with me about tea ceremony in general.

I thought that the whole thing turned out very nicely, including the tour of Shofuso and the bit on the taiko group. I always cringe when I see myself on film, but they managed to make even me look good. If you’d like to see for yourself, it’s just been posted online:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/226832/americas-greatest-otaku-down-home-otaku

The Philadelphia portion starts at around 3 minutes and 15 sections into the clip.

Enjoy!

First Lessons of the Season

2011-03-09T10:51:00.003-05:00

We got an unexpected warm spell (relatively speaking) for our first lessons in March, so we had lessons in the fifteen-mat room. It was a good thing that we did, because we had a full house – in addition to our regulars, we had an old friend returning for lessons after some time away for health reasons, and a new (to us) student continuing her tea studies after starting with a different teacher. In the morning, we had two people starting to learn tea for the first time, which is always exciting to watch. Definitely an auspicious start to the season!

Here’s a couple of photos to give you the feeling:

This is the steam coming off the kama (hot water kettle) as it boils water for tea…

And this is the garden in Shofuso as seen from the veranda…

Haru Ichiban

2011-02-27T13:03:00.001-05:00

After a cold, cold winter, a week or so ago we had our first real thaw of the season with a warm wind from the south. A Japanese chajin (tea person) I was with called it “haru ichiban,” “the first of spring.” That’s the feeling that’s in the air right now -- the early flowers are just getting ready to bloom, we’re in the middle of plans for cherry blossom season, and we’re getting ready to go back to have lessons at Shofuso again.

Shofuso is a traditional Japanese house, which means, among other things, that it has no heat or indoor plumbing. The indoor plumbing is easy enough to deal with – we just carry buckets of water to the “mizuya” (literally “water room,” it’s the preparation area of a tea room, most often translated “kitchen”). But during the winter the heat is a challenge, because for safety reasons we aren’t allowed to use the traditional solution, which would be to build a fire in the fire-pit of the tearoom. There are electrical outlets around the house, so we can run extension cords into the room to power space heaters, but the space heaters are not match for truly freezing weather. So in January and February we have a long winter break, and come back to Shofuso in March.

There’s a real sense of renewal there, throwing open the doors and airing out the rooms and getting ready for our busy summer season. In early March it’ll probably still be too cold to sit and look at the garden outside while we do tea, but there’ll still be time to appreciate the warmth of our tea and the feeling of the bowls in our hands. No matter how many times I start this process, it never gets old, and I’m never less grateful for the opportunity to stop and really feel it.

A New Start for the New Year

2011-01-10T00:21:00.001-05:00

It’s been a long time coming, but our little tea group has become an official organization: the Chado Association of Philadelphia!

I don’t know how many of our know the history of our group; it was founded in 1987 by Brother Joseph Keenan of La Salle University. He was responsible for getting a tea house built on campus, and for many years taught tea classes along with Taeko-sensei and Mariko-sensei. After Brother Joe’s death, we kept on holding lessons, but in 2007 the university ended the tea program.

Not that I don’t understand the politics involved, but losing our tearoom really threw us into a frenzy. We wondered if we would still be able to offer public lessons, and if we were going to be able to continue as a group at all. For a tea person, losing your tea room is traumatic; losing your practice is unthinkable.

We were very lucky to be able to continue to offer tea lessons at Shofuso, the Japanese House and Gardens in Fairmount Park in Philadelphia – they’ve been great about supporting us. But the lesson that we learned from our experience with La Salle was that we needed to have an existence as an entity of our own if we wanted to survive as a tea group. Three years later, we’ve finally gotten nonprofit status, and we’re ready to go.

Those of you who are familiar with our tea school, Urasenke, might be wondering if we’re going to apply for status as part of the Tankokai, the official membership organization. We’ve explored that, but Urasenke says we’re still too small. It’s okay. I know that we’re going to grow and succeed.

If you want to know more, check out our web site: www.phillytea.org. We’d love to have you join us!

Perspectives on Tea

2010-12-09T20:46:00.002-05:00

Continuing my updates from the past few months…

Back in October, I was contacted by a writer from a blog called Tea + Travel about participating in a series of interviews about tea ceremony. If you’d like to read it, the link is here:
http://travelandtea.com/2010/10/03/morgan-beard-philly-tea/

There were three other interviews in the series also. The first was from Gabriel Soga Caciula, who is an Urasenke teacher from Belgium:

“What is there, in Chado that attracts non-Japanese? I would say the same thing that attracts Japanese. In the space defined by the concepts mentioned before: aesthetics, philosophy, decorum, social entertainment, one can find the basic principles defining the spirituality of the way of tea, derived from the closeness of this practice to Zen Buddhism: Wa, Key, Sei, Jaku or Harmony, Respect, Purity, Tranquility.”
- Read the rest of the interview here: http://travelandtea.com/2010/10/01/the-way-of-tea-an-interview-with-gabriel-cacilua/

There was also one with Rebecca Lyn Cragg of Camellia Teas in Ottawa, Canada:

“For those who stand outside the Chanoyu Culture, looking in at something silent, mysterious, exotic and elaborate, they cannot often find or appreciate what it is that captures the hearts of practitioners. We in turn, are not always able to convey our fascination and commitment skillfully either. If I could offer an analogy, it might be a little like those who attend a classical concert: while the general audience may enjoy the melody, or harmony they hear, likely other musicians, particularly those of the same instrument – and even more so – those who have studied, played and enjoyed that particular composer’s piece, are best able to empathize and appreciate whether the musician has interpreted the piece well, or played that crescendo ‘correctly’, or not.
Athletes too I think could understand that ‘mastery’ is something we strive for throughout our lives. Playing a ‘perfect game’ is nearly impossible (as impossible as becoming a Tea ‘Master’, a term I strongly dislike). The people attending the sports game can cheer and be pleased with the outcome if the athlete wins, but not necessarily understand the brilliance of applying certain strategies, or understand the intricacies of what a move was particularly well-executed. In the end, the same is true of these tea rituals: likely only other practitioners (of the same school, and there are dozens of different tea schools), can really appreciate the time, effort, thoughtfulness and depth that has gone into creating a tea gathering. Still, the musician, athlete and tea practitioner continues to forge ahead, enjoying the collegiality as well as the general audience.”
- Read more: http://travelandtea.com/2010/10/07/the-way-of-tea-rebecca-lynn-craig-of-camellia-teas-in-ottawa-canada/

And Michael Ricci, an Urasenke instructor in Colorado:

The most two important things about adapting traditional tea ceremony into a different time and culture is balance and non-attachment. You must always respect the tradition as much as possible, but that doesn’t mean adhering to it always. It’s simply impossible to do that and a creative and sensitive person will find ways to make the translation both successful and enjoyable. By being balanced a person will have equal understanding of tradition and change, and by being non-attached a person will have the freedom and ability to make changes where they are needed without causing any kind of disturbance in himself or others.
- Read more: http://travelandtea.com/2010/10/19/the-way-of-tea-an-interview-with-michael-ricci%C2%A0colorado/

If you're interested in tea in general, there's lots of other great stuff on the Tea & Travel site too -- go and check it out at http://travelandtea.com

Clay + Fire = Awesome

2010-11-23T00:33:00.006-05:00

I know it’s been a while since I updated the blog. I apologize sincerely for that, but I do have a good excuse… I just got married!

So with my lapse in tea discussion, I have a lot to talk about. Rather than going chronologically, which is just too predictable, I want to start with what happened this past weekend: a kiln firing.

I talked before about Willi Singleton, a local ceramic artist who, among other things, makes tea utensils. He trained for many years in Japan, and when he came back to this country he built a noborigama (a climbing kiln) on his property. The kiln is wood-fired, and it requires a lot of expertise to manage a firing properly. This past weekend I got to participate in one of those firings.

The actual firing began on Thursday afternoon, but it wasn’t until the last two days of the firing (Saturday and Sunday) that the helpers came in. Roughly, the process is this: Willi throws the pots and does the standard sorts of preparation – glazing, bisque firing – and then stacks the pots on shelves in the various chambers. The placement of pieces is crucial, because the flow of air (and especially airborne ash) through the kiln will determine how each piece looks. Certain glazes will produce a certain effect, but the temperature inside the kiln, air flow, and the ash itself all play into the process. It’s very unpredictable, but that’s what makes the end result beautiful.

Willi’s kiln has four chambers, but this time he was only firing two of them. The kiln is built into a hillside (hence the “climbing” part of the name), and the lowest part of the kiln is the firebox, which looks kind of like a fifth chamber. At the beginning of the firing process, Willi builds a fire in the firebox, and then gradually keeps the fire burning, building the temperature. Once the temperature inside the first kiln reaches a certain temperature, he stops stoking the firebox and starts stoking that first kiln, while simultaneously feeding the second kiln to prepare it for a full stoking. Once the second kiln gets to the right temperature, he starts stoking that one and feeding the third, and so on. Once the final kiln has been stoked for the right amount of time, he seals up all the holes in the kiln and allows the fire to smother out on its own.

Here’s a photo of the four chambers from the side. The brick archways covered over with the white substance (I think it’s some type of clay, but I forgot to ask) are actually the doors that Willi uses to access the chambers and insert/remove the pots.

I arrived Saturday night around 9:30. At that point, crews had already been working for many hours stoking the firebox. There were three people working the box, one on the central opening in the firebox, and one person each on two side ports. The photo below was taken when the openings were closed up, but you can see the opening in the middle and the ports above the cinder blocks:

The stoking has a rhythm. Someone (whoever has been designated to watch the fire) keeps an eye on air vents in the first chamber. When the flames coming out of the air vents fall to a certain level, someone tells the stokers to stoke – they all have to go at the same time – and the stokers at the ports remove the block closing the opening, add a set number of pieces of wood, and close the ports again, while the stoker in the center fills the opening with larger blocks of wood. Then everybody waits until the flames die down again, maybe 2-3 minutes.

This process continued for several hours. Along with the pots in the kiln are a series of 3-4 cones; I don’t know the technical details (maybe one of you can fill me in!) but when the first cone bends over and the second one is getting bendy, it’s time to move from stoking the firebox to stoke the first chamber. As luck would have it, that happened during my working shift, around 4 a.m.

Stoking the chambers is more difficult than stoking the firebox, because the goal is to keep the fire spread evenly throughout the kiln. Because the kiln is so wide, there’s one person on each side of the kiln, each stoking simultaneously. The stokers have to shoot thin pieces of wood through a hole that’s about six inches square into specific locations within the kiln. So, for example, Willi might say “two, two, two,” meaning that they have to shoot two pieces to the middle of the kiln, two pieces to a point that’s halfway between the middle and the edge, and drop two pieces on the ledge right below the opening. The stokers then keep an eye on the flames coming out of the vent holes above their heads, and call out to the other side when the flames are getting low. The goal is for the flames to go down at exactly the same time; if one side goes down too quickly, Willi (or the designated watcher) might tell the stoker to add just one more piece of wood to try to even it out.

As a rank amateur, I was given an easier job, feeding the second chamber. So after the stokers fed the first chamber, I put one piece of wood in the second chamber, alternating sides, so I was constantly moving back and forth. When they first started stoking the first chamber, I was literally running back and forth from one side to the other because they were stoking every 30 seconds or so; after a while, the pace slowed down to stoking every 1-2 minutes.

Here’s a photo of the process in action: there’s one person standing and watching the flame, and the person bending over is opening the access hole in preparation for stoking. (All of those photos were taken later in the process, when they were stoking the second chamber, but the principle is the same.)

Here’s another photo of the stoking process. You can see that one person is doing the actual stoking, and the person beside him is doing a secondary stoking to keep the fire even (and also fetching wood, which is a crucial part of the process).

And here’s Willi checking the progress of the pots:

My shift ended at 6 a.m., and I went to get some sleep. I came back to the kiln just before noon, at which point they were stoking the second chamber. The firing ended later that afternoon, but it’ll still be a while before Willi finds out how everything turned out – it takes about a week or so for the kiln to cool off to the point where it’s safe to go inside.

It was truly an amazing experience to take part in a firing like this, even though my part was a small one. There’s something really primal about tending the fire and watching its rhythms, and looking through the vent holes to see the pots undergoing their transformation. I can’t wait to see what comes out!

A Freer Excursion

2010-08-26T21:01:00.005-04:00

Recently I went with a group of other tea people to the Freer Gallery in Washington D.C. The museum, which is part of the Smithsonian Institution, contains the collection of Charles Lang Freer, who collected all types of Asian art at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth century – around the time that Japanese families were starting to sell off all their old art treasures following the dramatic shift in culture of the Meiji Period. The gallery has a truly stunning collection of tea ceremony utensils, only a fraction of which are on display. But if you want, you can make an appointment with the gallery to come and view the utensils that they have in storage – even take them out and handle them. For tea people, it’s an extraordinary opportunity to handle the types of utensils that we normally only read about in books.

We arrived at the Freer and were led down to their vaults in the basement. They have an aisle dedicated to tea ceremony wares, many of which date back to the late 16th and early 17th century – the time of Sen no Rikyu, when tea ceremony was in its “golden age.” We got to hold bowls that were made by Hon’ami Koetsu, a 17th-century calligrapher and ceramic artist who was a personal favorite of mine; bowls made by the heads of the Raku family, the originators of Raku ceramics; and real ko-seto (“old Seto”) tea containers, the “standard” style that modern ceramic artists can only imitate.

Here’s a photo of a bowl by Hon’ami Koetsu (at least, they think it is – part of the collection is a book with details on how and where the piece was acquired, followed by page after page of experts commenting/arguing about whether or not they think the piece is genuine):

And here’s a rather dizzying array of ko-seto tea containers, all of them many centuries old:

But I think the highlight of the trip for most of us was the opportunity to handle some real tenmoku bowls. This requires some explanation. Tenmoku is a type of ceramics that originally came from China to Japan; some of those bowls were already centuries old when they were brought to Japan, and they are only used in the most exclusive, formal types of tea ceremony. Even to learn the temae (ceremonies) that use these bowls requires years of prior study, and of course, in practice we only use copies. Even to get a tenmoku bowl that’s really Chinese – not even an old one – is very difficult and expensive.

The bowls that we were looking at were, on average, over a thousand years old, and had been brought to Japan from China. The one in this photo was said to have been used by the shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi at his famous tea ceremony gathering in Kitano:

This bowl is a style called “nogime” or “hare’s-fur,” because of the fine lines in the pattern of the glaze. The photo doesn’t do justice to the piece; the silvery parts of the glaze are actually iridescent, with a bluish-greenish-purple undertone depending on how you hold it. It’s amazing to think how long ago this bowl was made, and how much it must have gone through to get to this collection.

By the way, you notice that this bowl is a conical shape with a narrow bottom. It’s shaped that way because it’s intended to be placed on a little stand called a dai – in modern tea ceremony, if the bowl is ever taken off the stand, you have to put a piece of brocade cloth underneath it; a tenmoku bowl should never touch the floor.

If you ever have a chance, I can’t recommend a visit to the Freer highly enough. It’s a fantastic experience!

(Kind thanks to Mary Lynn Howard for allowing me to post the photos she took during our trip.)

Clothes Make the Chajin

2010-08-12T23:58:00.001-04:00

Last time I talked a little bit about wearing kimonos in general; this time I thought I’d say something about how they affect making tea.

Tea ceremony was designed to be done in kimono, primarily because that was everyday wear for the people who developed it. The arm positions are all done with kimono sleeves in mind; the silk wiping cloth is hung from the obi (the cloth that goes around the waist); the sitting, standing, and walking movements are all kimono-centric.

Wearing a kimono can be tough to get used to. The first time I ever wore one, I basically stood there and tried to stay out of the way while I got dressed like a Barbie doll. The first thing you feel is how restrictive it is around the midsection – if you’re a woman, that is. You have two layers of underwear and a kimono on top of that, and each layer is held closed with at least one tie around the waist, and then you have the obi, which is a long piece of heavy cloth that’s wrapped twice around your body and reinforced with a thin piece of cardboard. It’s not meant to be tight like a corset, but if it’s not snug then things are going to start coming apart. And with all those layers, there’s pretty much no chance of bending at the waist. And because the bottom is wrapped closely around you, you’re limited to fairly small steps.

So the range of movement options that you have in a kimono is pretty limited. You can sit (on a chair or in seiza, kneeling on the floor), you can stand, walk (not run, jump, or take huge steps up or down), move your arms, and lean forward and back.

The consequence of all this is that when you’re wearing a kimono, everything about the way you move changes. You walk in a different way, you handle things in a different way, you sit in a different way. If you’re new to kimonos, probably everything is going to feel a lot more awkward and restricted, and it’ll be a relief to be back in your “normal” clothes again. But I’ve found that wearing a kimono, particularly combined with practicing tea, when I’m thinking about my movements anyhow, changes my mental attitude completely. I do everything more purposefully and carefully, and I tend to focus more on what I’m doing, particularly in the tea room. I’m sure a lot of that is psychological – kimonos, in my brain, equal tea – but I think a lot of it is the kimono, also. By learning to become comfortable within the restrictions, you learn to express yourself more fully through the outlet you have. Not unlike tea ceremony itself!

Tea Life and Kimonos

2010-07-23T00:19:00.000-04:00

One of the aspects of Japanese culture that tea practitioners have to make a decision about is the wearing of kimonos. Tea was developed during a time when everyone wore kimonos on a daily basis, and even today, the movements are intended to be done by someone wearing a kimono – everything from the way the sleeves fall to where you place the various items that you carry into the room (like the wiping cloth or fukusa and the papers we use to eat sweets, or kaishi).

Today, particularly for Westerners, the question of whether or not to wear a kimono is a personal one, and in my experience a lot depends on where you study and how your teacher feels about kimonos. If you go to Kyoto to study at the main Urasenke school, you’d be expected to wear a kimono to class every day. At branch schools, like the one at New York, kimonos are optional for lower-level classes and required for higher-level ones. If you’re studying with a private teacher, then your experience may vary.

I was taught that the proper etiquette is to always wear a kimono if you’re teaching a class, and that it’s optional if you’re taking a class (unless it’s one of the high-level classes I mentioned above). However, I know of people who choose to never wear a kimono, even when teaching. Others wear kimonos so often that they feel uncomfortable doing tea at all in Western clothes.

It’s very much a psychological thing. Some people – both Japanese and Westerners – prefer to wear kimonos, either because they like them or because they feel it adds to the tea experience. Some people prefer not to wear them because they’re so formal, or because they’re difficult to put on, or because they can be restrictive. I know a Japanese woman who doesn’t like to wear kimonos because she feels that people associate tea with geishas, and she doesn’t like feeling as if she’s put on display.

To me, kimonos are like formal wear for tea – if it’s a formal occasion, be it a gathering or a special class, or if I’m teaching – I wear a kimono. If it’s a more casual setting, I’ll wear Western clothes. But I can see that there are many different perspectives on kimono, and I respect whatever decision that others make.

In the coming weeks I’ll talk more about life with kimonos, especially as it relates to tea. If you’re interested, please feel free to post questions!

Feeling the Heat

2010-06-09T23:12:00.001-04:00

We’ve had a heat wave the past couple of weeks here, and being in an open-air house with no air conditioning, we really feel it when we’re doing tea.

Moving from our old tea house, with central heat and air, where the windows were all covered with screens, to doing tea in a house where we’re in touch with the elements, has really deepened my appreciation for why we do thing the way we do. For example, in the summertime we try to use bowls that are wide and open, which dispel the heat of the water faster and cool off the tea. Another classic example is the fact that the brazier that heats the water is shifted to a position farther away from the guests than in the winter.

But it’s more than that. Doing tea, even in lessons (maybe especially in lessons) requires a lot of concentration, and that’s really hard to maintain in hot weather. We all find ourselves making silly mistakes or forgetting things that under normal circumstances we’d have no trouble remembering.

I think that’s why, in the tea world, summer is considered a good time to do “casual teas” – using more playful, non-traditional items like glass bowls, and avoiding long and formal gatherings. It’s just too hot to be serious right now!

The worst heat of the season is still to come in July and August, and there are all kinds of season things that we can do to suggest coolness – to psych ourselves into not feeling so hot. But I think the real secret of doing tea in this season is to start by accepting our environment the way it is, and rather than complaining about it, to work with what we’ve got.

What's in a Name

2010-05-04T00:18:00.000-04:00

Recently myself and another of our tea people, Drew Hanson, received our chameis, or tea names.

It’s hard to exaggerate what a huge moment this is in the life of a tea ceremony practitioner. It’s a bit like a graduation in that it symbolizes the fact that you’ve completed a certain course of study – you’ve worked your way through increasingly difficult levels of tea practice and, more than that, you’ve worked to develop your inner self as well.

In another sense, it’s almost like taking on a new identity. It’s not just the new name itself (which, in times past in Japan, the tea practitioner might actually have used as his everyday name); along with the name, we get permission to wear the Urasenke crest on our kimonos, in the place where (for a Japanese person) the family crest would go. It’s a little bit like being adopted into a very large family.

My tea name is Somon. The first syllable, “So,” is the same for every tea practitioner who gets his or her tea name from Urasenke. It comes from Sen no Rikyu, the founder of the Urasenke lineage (and the lineage of every other major tea school in Japan). His Buddhist name was Soeki, and that was also the name that his friends and associates used when talking to him. We use the “So” from that name in our tea names; it’s difficult to translate, but the same character is often used in words relating a religious sect or teaching.

The second character of a person’s tea name often comes from their given name. For example, the “mon” in my name comes from the “mo” in my given name, Morgan. There are a number of different characters that could be read “mon,” but in my case, the character is the same as “crest,” as in a family crest. My Japanese language teacher says that the name has the feeling of someone who’s a symbol of a spiritual teaching.

Of course, the name is meant to be an inspiration to work harder rather than a description of my current state. Still, it feels like a huge responsibility, especially since I feel like I have so much left to learn. Tea ceremony is an art that you could study for a lifetime and still keep learning, but getting to this point really kind of throws a light on everything that I’ve done, and everything I still have left to do. I feel different, and I think I need to hold on to that feeling so that I can keep trying to get better.

Sakura Season!

2010-04-14T00:00:00.009-04:00

This past weekend was Philadelphia’s Sakura Matsuri, the cherry blossom festival, so of course it was a busy weekend for us. On Saturday, Drew Hanson, one of our teachers, did a demonstration at the Morris Arboretum that was covered by the local news (he ended up on television!), and was attended by 60-70 people. I was helping one of our other teachers, Taeko Shervin, doing two smaller demonstrations at the Japanese House. I don’t have any photos of Drew’s demo yet, but here are some from Taeko-sensei’s:

The demonstrations took place on the veranda of the house, overlooking the koi pond. Here’s a shot that gives you a sense of where everybody was:

And us serving sweets:

And if you’re wondering what they saw as they were sitting there, here’s a photo of Taeko-sensei doing tea (I’m standing behind her). She was doing a type of tea ceremony called shikishidate, a type of tea ceremony intended to be done outside picnic-style.

And, just for the fun of it, a shot of the newly redesigned tsukubai (water basin for washing hands) outside the tea room at the Japanese House:

The next day we all came together for Sakura Sunday, which is the culmination of Philadelphia’s three weeks of cherry blossom-related events. There were Japanese cultural activities, music, and general merriment all around the Horticultural Center, which is the location of one of the major cherry tree plantings in the area. Unfortunately, because of the unusually warm spring, the cherry blossoms were almost completely finished blooming by festival time (except for the late-blooming double-blossom variety), but we were very lucky to have absolutely gorgeous weather for both days.

We were set up in one of the Horticultural Center’s greenhouses, surrounded by plants, underneath a little tent for shade. We had people lining up to get in about half an hour before each demonstration, and due to the limited space we could only fit 50-60 people in the room, but there were more standing in the doorway looking in.

This first photo is Taeko-sensei doing the same procedure again (Drew is sitting behind her):

This is the first demonstration; the first guest (drinking in this shot) is Mary Lynn, one of our students; the other two guests are volunteers from the audience:

This photo is from our second demonstration; the first guest (with the bowl in front of her) is Terry, another of our students, and the other two guests were festival volunteers from Philadelphia University. I’m on the right, acting as assistant (hanto):

In this last shot, Mary Lynn and Drew are serving tea to the Cherry Blossom Queen and her entourage, who flew in from Japan as special guests of the festival:

We’re always grateful to have so much interest during cherry blossom time, and to be able to enjoy the beauty of the season. I hope that you had some wonderful cherry memories too!

Gratitude

2010-04-05T21:49:00.001-04:00

I think it’s an almost universal truth that we don’t appreciate our teachers enough – at least, not while we’re students. This is true in a lot of areas, but particularly in a practice like tea ceremony, where you spend so much time learning from a single teacher or (in the case of a branch school) a single group of teachers.

I was thinking about this lately in the context of taking lessons from my own sensei. When I was a student – or I should say, when was a beginning student – I didn’t have a sense of how much I didn’t know, or how lucky I was to have such experienced teachers. I find myself now wishing I’d asked more questions, taken better notes, and most of all, that I’d let myself be in the moment more.

I think the ultimate lesson that students learn, though, is that if you want to be a good student you have to move beyond just being a student and really practice. It’s only when you need to plan your own tea gathering, for example, or teach a class that the holes in your knowledge become obvious. And its only when that happens that you realize how important it is to always keep learning – and be a better student this time.

Licensed to Tea

2010-03-17T23:52:00.000-04:00

In tea ceremony, as in many other Japanese arts, there is a system of ranking to mark a student’s progress in tea. It’s a little bit like the belt system in karate, except that instead of a physical symbol like a belt, what the student receives is a license to study the next level of tea.

At the beginner level, the students learn how to prepare thin tea and thick tea, and a number of different variations on those basic temae (procedures for preparing tea). Students also receive a separate license to study the portable temae known as chabako (“box tea”). This may seem pretty straightforward, but it’s not just about memorizing a sequence of movements, it’s about perfecting your technique and starting to absorb the philosophy of tea, and so it can be years from the time a student starts taking lessons until he or she is ready to move on to the next level. After that, there’s an intermediate level known as konarai, a more advanced level known as shikaden, and finally a series of high-level licenses known collectively as okuden. At each level, the temaes get progressively more complex and require more specialized knowledge and equipment. Only after mastering all off these levels does a student receive his or her chamei (“tea name”), which means that he or she has truly become a tea person, and can teach and practice tea independently of his or her teacher.

The licenses themselves are special documents – they’re handwritten in Japanese calligraphy, with the name of the student, the date, and the seal of Urasenke’s Oiemoto (Grand Master). The application has to be made by the teacher and sent to Kyoto, and it can take anywhere from six months to a year for the license to come back (usually closer to six months). In our group, when licenses arrive, the teacher reads them out in the tearoom and then formally presents them to the student.

Different teachers approach licenses differently. Some teachers will move a student through the different levels very quickly; some will take their time and make sure that the student is fully prepared before before allowing them to advance. I think on average, depending on the teacher and the student, it takes between ten and fifteen years to get to the chamei level. (This is assuming that the student is studying part-time. It’s possible to got to Kyoto and study full-time at Urasenke, in which case you would get to the chamei level in about three years.)

Of course, the vast majority of students who begin studying tea ceremony don’t make it to the chamei level – not that it’s so difficult, but it does require a lot of time and patience, and it takes a certain kind of person to be that dedicated to tea. I was thinking about that this past weekend as one of our students received her konarai license – a true achievement in tea, and one that she well earned. I was really proud to see her advance, especially since she worked so hard to get there. It’s been a real privilege to watch her blossom and continue on her journey in tea.

A Room of One's Own

2010-02-18T22:56:00.000-05:00

Anyone who practices tea ceremony for long enough inevitably come to a point where they want to create their own tea space. The tea room is an absolutely crucial part of tea ceremony – the architecture, the design, the colors and shapes all contribute to the mood of a tea ceremony. Anyone who’s been in a tea room will testify that there’s no substitute. And lo, after fifteen years of tea ceremony, I’ve finally arrived at a time and place where I can create one of my own.

If I were going to do this in the absolutely proper way – hire a Japanese carpenter trained in traditional design techniques who is an expert in all of the multitude of rules that apply to the creation of a space like a tearoom and buy only the most traditional materials imported from Japan – I could easily spent tens of thousands of dollars on this room, maybe as high as a hundred thousand dollars. Needless to say, that’s a bit out of my budget range. So, like most American tea practitioners setting out to create their own tea space, I’m pulling together the resources I can and doing it with a little help from my friends and family.

At this point, I’m just beginning the design phase, which in a lot of ways is the most important part. You have to think about every detail – not just the layout of the room, but where the light is coming from, what’s illuminated and what isn’t, what the guests will see when they enter the room; what they’ll see when they’re sitting and drinking tea. How will the hanging flower vase look when a guest is sitting in front of the alcove? Is there a way to adjust the temperature if the room is too hot or too cold? Is there enough ventilation if you’re using a charcoal fire to heat the water?

In my case, we’ve set aside a room in the house that’s going to be the tearoom; there’s just enough space to create a room of four and a half tatami mats (the smaller of two “standard” sizes) with an alcove and a separate mizuya or preparation area. I’d like the room to include a sunken hearth – used in the wintertime to bring the fire closer to the guests and keep them warm. In order for that to happen, we’d have to either cut a hole in the floor (not a popular option with my significant other) or create a raised floor within the room, which is the more likely scenario. The problem with that is that it lowers the ceiling to just a little more than six and a half feet, which should be okay for most guests, but it makes the issue of lighting fixures more important.

The other big design question is how to deal with window access. The way the room is currently laid out, the alcove would be next to the window, so the window would be behind an interior wall (which I’d want to do anyhow because there’s a radiator right in front of the window, and I want to hide that). I can put a window in that wall to let the light through, but then there’s the question of how to access the window if we need to open it or do repairs. What I’m thinking is that instead of a wall, we could install a pair of sliding doors with shoji, so that the light comes through and it provides easy access. Would it look strange to have a door where there’s no actual exit? I think the function would probably trump form in this case.

Anyhow, I’m sure I’ll be writing lots more about this in the coming months. Questions and feedback are certainly welcome!

Hatsugama

2010-02-01T00:45:00.001-05:00

Last week was our Hatsugama celebration, our first tea of the year. It’s the biggest celebration of the tea year (at least in our little group), and also requires the most planning and preparation. After about fifteen years of studying tea ceremony, I’ve come to take for granted the amount of work it takes to pull off a tea gathering, but it really hit home to me during the following exchange…

I was out with a discussion group that I belong to, and some people asked if I wanted to go out for coffee. “I can’t,” I said. “I have a tea gathering on Sunday.” “But it’s Tuesday,” someone pointed out. “You want to make sure you’re extra, extra rested?”

See, to me, it made sense. I’d actually started the advance cooking prep a few days before, doing some shopping and making the filling for the sweets. Back home, I had a schedule written up for every day until the gathering with a list of what needed to get done that day, and I knew that pretty much every hour until the gathering started Sunday morning was filled up with something that needed to be done, including a full day of cooking and errand-running on Saturday. (And what I was doing was only half of the workload – Drew Hanson, one of our other teachers, was co-hosting the event and had an equally long to-do list!)

When the day itself dawned, I was up at 6 and at the site by 7:30 to get everything set up. I mentioned in my last post that we can’t have Hatsugama in our usual meeting spot because of the lack of heat, so we tried out a new venue this year. It worked out really well – we divided the room in half and laid down tatami mats in an eight-mat pattern that would become the tearoom, then used shoji screens to divide the space so that the half of the room with sinks and a mini-kitchen became the mizuya (the preparation area). Of course, even with tatami mats and a screen set up to represent the alcove for the hanging scroll, it wasn’t anything like being in a real tearoom, but as an improvisation it wasn’t too bad. In the wintertime, there’s usually a sunken hearth in a tearoom where the fire for the water is laid; in this case, the fire was contained in a raised hearth that’s positioned where the sunken hearth would normally be.

The guests arrived shortly before the start time, 10 a.m., and the gathering was under way. First came the laying of the charcoal, then the food. We had several courses – first a tray with rice, sashimi, and some vegetables; then sake, then a miso soup with mochi in it, and then some stacked boxes with various seasonal foods. After that, we served the sweets for thick tea, and then there was a break. After the break was thick tea, followed by thin tea. The whole gathering took about four hours.

There were people of all levels of tea experience there, from teachers to guests who hadn’t ever studied tea, and even some old friends. Even if everything wasn’t quite perfect (and in a four-hour tea gathering where every move you make is governed by a specific rule, the most important part of preparation is giving up the idea that you’re going to get it all right!), the guests all seemed to have a good time, which is the most important part. Tea is all about having an experience, and if you’re lucky, it’ll be a memory that people will treasure. Making that happen is worth all the work that goes into it, and more.

Preparing for Hatsugama

2010-01-13T23:38:00.000-05:00

Although New Year’s Day has come and gone, we’re still gearing up for the beginning of our tea year – Hatsugama, the celebration of the first tea ceremony of the year.

Traditionally, this is done on New Year’s Day. If you’re truly hard-core, you can do Joyagama, the final tea of the year, the evening before, and then have another tea ceremony on January 1. We’re not that hard-core. Because many of our group have other plans for that time of year, and/or travel, we tend to have our first tea of the year late in January, and then start classes afterwards.

Hatsugama has become a challenge since our tea group moved to the Japanese House and Gardens. Because the Japanese House is, in fact, a traditional-style Japanese house, there’s no heat, which is an issue in Pennsylvania in January. After trying a couple of different solutions, we’re experimenting this year with having our gathering at the Horticultural Center, which is not in any way traditional Japanese architecture, but it has a nice, quiet room with windows to the outside and heat and running water and a number of other very attractive features for a winter gathering. We’ll see how it goes.

At this point, t-minus ten days, the menu is set, the utensils are chosen, the guests are invited, and we’re in the lull between the pre-gathering planning and the last-minute cooking rush. I’m really looking forward to this gathering, though – New Year’s is always a happy time of year, and a great time to enjoy the company of friends and renew ourselves.

I hope that you’re all enjoying the beginning of 2010 too!

A Studio Show

2009-12-17T23:59:00.002-05:00

A Studio Show

Recently I went to a semi-annual studio show/sale by a local ceramic artist, Willi Singleton. His work is close to my heart as a tea person because he was trained in Japan, and he fires his ceramics using a Japanese type of kiln called a nobori-gama (a climbing kiln).

A nobori-gama consists of several chambers, large enough to walk inside but not quite tall enough to stand up in, going progressively higher on a hillside. When it’s time to fire, you build the fire to the right temperature over a day or so, maintain the fire for three days, and then let it die down and cool over the last day. It’s an intensive process that requires a team of several people, because there has to be someone watching the fire 24 hours a day to make sure that the kiln doesn’t get too hot or two cold. It’s a very complex process that requires a lot of expertise, because you have to be able to judge the temperature of the fire by its color and to know when to make the fire hotter or colder to produce the right kiln effects. For tea people, ceramics like bowls and water containers fired this way have a texture and a visual impact that you just can’t duplicate with a gas kiln.

Willi makes his living selling his ceramics, and he does shows all over, including some exhibitions in Japan. He does a lot of functional objects like bowls, plates, and cups, and also (because he knows some local tea ceremony practitioners) some utensils specific for tea ceremony, like tea bowls, cold water jars, and sometimes tea containers. Most of the tea practitioners in the area have at least one or two of his things – some of us a bit more. We also use his bowls for classes and demonstrations. The students really tend to like his bowls – some will gravitate to his bowls over the Japanese ones. And some just like the fact that those pieces come from a local source.

I really enjoy that aspect of it, too. In Japan, there are a number of different ceramic-making centers, and a number of the different types of pottery are used in tea ceremony. To me, it’s wonderful to have a local artist who makes his wares in a traditional way, and to be able to use that in our tea gatherings. It brings the whole thing a little closer to home.

Robiraki Time Again

2009-11-04T23:36:00.001-05:00

This past weekend was our Robiraki celebration, the opening of the winter hearth. This time of year the weather can be so variable around here, which is of particular concern in a house with no heat! But a tropical storm was just on its way out, so it was a little rainy, but not too cold. And the leaves were still on the trees, making for a beautiful day when the sun peeked out later.

For this gathering we tried something a little different – sumi shomo, in which the host invites the first guest to lay the charcoal fire. Of course, in a gathering you would never do this without arranging it with the first guest in advance; it’s very bad form to spring it on your guest as a surprise. In this case, most of our guests were inexperienced at doing the first guest role, which is a bit complicated, and so one of our teachers sat in as first guest. Because I was acting in the “host” role, I got to sit in and watch him lay the fire, which is something I very rarely get a chance to do. It was a great experience.

But probably the best part for me was actually being able to make tea. Last year about this time I suffered a knee injury, and it’s been a long, slow process of healing and getting my joints back in shape to sit seiza (kneeling). Even as recently as August, my knee wouldn’t bend completely into a sitting position – if I tried to kneel, my backside wouldn’t quite make it down to rest on my legs. But for Robiraki I was able to sit without a supporting bench and prepare thick tea (koicha) for the guests. I feel like I’m really “back,” even though I still have some work to do on my sitting and standing.

More importantly, I think the guests had a good time, too. We had nine total, which is a good, comfortable number – more than that (as is a necessity at big branches like New York) starts to feel a little impersonal. Less than that is fine, of course – you could have a tea gathering with just one guest if you wanted to – but it was good to see some old friends again, and to give some of our newer students a first-hand experience of how everything we’ve been teaching fits together. But even beyond the number of guests, everybody got along really well – there was a good feeling between the people who were there, which is the hardest thing to prepare for beforehand, but one of the most important aspects of a harmonious gathering.

Now it’s time to gather around the sunken hearth and think warm thoughts for the wintertime. It’s going to be a beautiful season coming up.

Aki Shigure (Autumn Shower)

2009-10-20T23:27:00.003-04:00

This past weekend it turned cold and rainy here, and we were especially grateful for a warm cup of tea!

As I was passing by the tsukubai (the outdoor water basin where guests stop to wash their hands before coming into the tearoom) I saw the raindrops falling into the water, and it was such a pretty image that I thought I should write a poem about it. So here it is, with apologies to any real poets out there:

tsukubai filling
raindrops on cloudy water
waiting for red leaves

Americans vs. Tradition

2009-10-01T22:47:00.000-04:00

The other day I was talking with someone -- not about tea, just general conversation – and she said, “I’m a practical person. I don’t think that we should be bound by history or tradition. All I care about is what works.”

Probably most people in this country would agree with that statement. It’s ingrained into our culture, the image of the common-sense pioneer breaking new ground and leaving the old world behind. But when you practice tea ceremony, you have to put yourself in a different mindset.

History and tradition are part of the essence of tea. Most of the utensils that we use are modeled on utensils or designs that were used centuries ago. The practice itself has changed very little in the past four to five hundred years. And today tea ceremony is regarded in Japan as one of the bearers of traditional culture.

“Okay, fine,” you say. “But if it hasn’t changed, doesn’t that really mean that it’s stagnated? That the creativity has gone out of it? Why not experiment and put some new ideas into it?”

Here’s the thing. Even though I said “Americans” in the title of this post, this is the human condition: We all think that we’re right. That we know everything. When we’re young, we roll our eyes at the old fogies who try to tell us that we don’t know what we’re doing; when we get older, we roll our eyes at the young people who insist on doing things their own way. When we come into a new situation, we bring our past experience, and with it the conviction that our experience has taught us the best way to go about things.

But if all you’re ever thinking about is doing things your way, from your own experience – your own idea of what works – then you never really learn anything. Why use a tea scoop made from bamboo when a metal one would work? Why wear a kimono when Western clothes are more comfortable? Why worry about doing things in exactly the right sequence? These are things that you can’t learn unless you truly experience them, and you can’t truly experience them as long as you’re stuck in your preconceived notions.

The first thing you have to do if you’re setting out to become a tea person is leave your ego at the door and say to yourself, “I don’t know anything.” Put aside everything that you think you know about what “works,” what’s “right,” and be open. Do what your teacher tells you, and learn. If you keep going, then you’ll start to have those moments when everything comes together and you understand things that never made sense before. I’m not talking about learning facts, because as soon as you think, “Okay, now I know something about tea,” you’re sunk. You have to stop worrying about what you know and just keep practicing.

Once people have been studying tea for many years, have immersed themselves in the tradition, have had those experiences of understanding – then they’re ready to start creating and innovating. And to be a living practice, tea really needs that. But people who want to jump straight to the innovation without ever taking the time to understand what they’re doing are really just cheating themselves. Tradition in tea isn’t about chaining people down and ruining their fun; it’s about giving people something deep, and precious, and beautiful. Maybe accepting that it’s there is an act of faith. But on the other hand, if we didn’t sense how deep the practice runs, then I guess we wouldn’t have become tea people.

How Much Would You Pay for This Tea Jar?

2009-09-22T00:01:00.002-04:00

Last week, this tea jar sold at auction at Christie’s . . .

. . . for $662,000.

So maybe you’re asking yourself, what is it, and why would anybody pay that much for it?

This is what’s called a chatsubo, or a tea storage jar. In the old days, they used these to transport tea leaves and store them until they were ready to grind and drink. I wrote in my last post about the special ceremony that involves the opening of the new tea for the year. During that ceremony, the chatsubo is put on display in the tearoom and given to the guests so that they can look at it more closely.

This particular jar is what’s called “o-meibutsu.” Meibutsu is a term that refers to certain very old tea utensils that came from China to Japan during the centuries when tea ceremony first became popular. These items were very highly valued by tea practitioners not for their intrinsic value, but for their aesthetic value.

This particular tea jar originally came from Chin during the Southern Song Dynasty in the 13th century. During the late sixteenth century – the lifetime of Sen no Rikyu – it was owned by a series of merchants/tea practitioners, and recorded in some famous tea diaries. In fact, there’s a letter from Rikyu himself that accompanied the piece at auction (the description I read didn’t say what the letter was about, but presumably it was an authentication of the jar). During the 17th century, it became the property of the Tokugawa shogunate (the military rulers of Japan), and then it passed through a variety of nobility and wealthy Japanese hands until it finally came to this auction. Like all meibutsu, it has a poetic name (mei), which is Chigusa, “Myriad of flowers.”

Recently, I was in a class where the teacher was talking about meibutsu. He said that in the old days, when those items were brought to Japan, the tea masters spent a lot of time really looking at the utensils used in tea and comparing their characteristics to determine which ones were the best, and for that reason we should study the same utensils so that we can learn from them. Of course, unlike the 16th-century tea masters who used meibutsu in their gatherings on a regular basis, the chance of someone in America seeing a meibutsu object outside of a museum is pretty darn slim. Mostly we rely on photos, and maybe a glimpse of one if we do visit a museum in Japan. That’s why it’s kind of exciting to me to think that we have a meibutsu object here in the United States. It’s like a living piece of tea history – or maybe even tea legend – is a little bit closer to home.

Tasting Tea

2009-08-27T20:48:00.001-04:00

In reply to one of my previous posts, someone asked me if tea ceremony practitioners are concerned with the taste of the tea at all, or if it’s mostly about the form and movement. In fact, tea people actually do a lot to try to make the best possible bowl for their guests.

It actually starts before the tea ever comes near a tearoom, in the fields where the tea is grown. Matcha, the powdered tea used in tea ceremony, is botanically the exact same plant that Lipton’s uses, camellia sinensis. The first difference between matcha and other types of tea is the way that it’s grown. It’s cultivated in the shade (not completely, because the plants do need some light, but the amount of light is strictly regulated), and the leaves are picked in May, when they’re still young. Camellia is an evergreen, but for the best tea the growers take the young leaves. The leaves are steamed to keep them green and then put into storage for six months, similar to the way wine is aged. As with wine, the aging process matures the taste – fresh tea doesn’t have the same complexity.

After the tea is aged, it’s put through a process that removes the stems and veins and then ground into a fine powder, about the consistency of flour. (In fact, in the old days they used grinding stones that were very similar to the ones used in milling flour.) So around November, the current year’s tea is ready to be opened and drunk. This is a special time in the tea world because it’s also the transition from summer to winter season, when we open the sunken hearth in the tearoom. There’s a special type of tea gathering performed only in November (often combined with the opening of the sunken hearth) in which the host will unseal a chatsubo, a ceramic tea storage jar, in front of the guests. Then, while the guests are eating their meal, they hear the sound of the host grinding the tea leaves, which are then used to prepare both thick and thin tea. However, these days most people buy their tea already powdered from the tea growers.

For the purpose of tea ceremony, there are two grades of matcha, usucha and koicha. Usucha means “thin tea;” it’s a lower grade of matcha, so the taste is more bitter, but still very good. If anyone has ever whisked a bowl of matcha for you, you’ve probably had usucha. Because the tea is powdered and you’re drinking the whole leaf, it’s stronger than steeped green teas like sencha, but still what we usually think of when we think of tea. Koicha, on the other hand, is exactly what the name says: “thick tea.” There’s more powdered tea mixed in with less water, and the end result is about the consistency of paint. For that reason, you want the best-tasting matcha you can get, and so the highest grades of matcha are reserved for koicha. Well, there’s no rule that says you can’t use koicha-grade tea for usucha, but it’s expensive – generally anywhere from $0.50 to $5 per gram.

Big matcha companies will often offer many different types and grades of koicha and usucha, each distinguished by its own poetic name. (For example, today I had an usucha whose poetic name was “sangetsu,” which means “moon and mountain.”) Like wine makers, tea growers will often blend tea from different sources to create a more consistent taste, but still, the taste of different teas is very distinctive. In fact, there’s even a type of tea gathering called chakabuki, in which the guests taste different teas, and then in a “blind tasting” try to remember the taste and correctly identify which tea is which.

When preparing for a gathering, the host pays careful attention to all of the factors that might affect the taste of the tea. Besides the tea itself, there’s the water. In the old days, particularly in Kyoto, which has been the center of tea culture since there was tea culture, the tea masters identified special wells that were thought to have the best possible water. To get the optimum taste, they would go to the wells before dawn to draw the water, even if the gathering was later in the day. These days it’s not so easy to get water from a special well, but we do make an effort to get the best-tasting water we can find.

Another factor is the sweets that are eaten right before the guest drinks the tea. We never serve sweets that have dairy in them, or that are greasy or oily, or that have a strong flavor, because that affects the taste of the tea. The best tea sweets are ones that complement the taste of the tea, and tea people spend a lot of time thinking about what will work and what won’t.

Yet another major factor (as with any type of tea) is the temperature of the water. Generally speaking, we aim for a temperature of around 180 degrees, but since we can’t whip out a thermometer and test the temperature in the middle of preparing tea, it’s up to the skill of the host to know when the water is too hot or too cold. That’s why during tea, we always carry a jar of cold water into the room and set it down next to the kettle – so if needed, we can cool down the water in the kettle so it doesn’t “burn” the tea.

But probably the most important thing that the host does to affect the taste of the tea is simply to create an atmosphere of tranquility in the room. One of the purposes (maybe the main purpose, depending on your point of view) of all the ritual surrounding the preparation of tea in chanoyu is to encourage the guests to relax and open their senses. Matcha tastes completely different in a tearoom than it does if you just whisk a bowl in your kitchen; the atmosphere, the sensory impressions, the person’s state of mind, everything about tea contributes to the main event, which is the moment that the first sip passes your lips. When we talk about the taste of tea, usually we’re talking about the literal flavor, but I think that any tea person would agree that the real taste of tea is in the heart, and not on the tongue.

August Heat

2009-08-18T00:29:00.000-04:00

Typically, we don’t have tea lessons in August. It’s not just that people tend to go on vacation; it’s the heat. Shofuso is a traditional-style Japanese house, which means, of course, no air conditioning. It was fine this year until the last week in July, when the weather turned very hot and humid.

In tea, we have techniques for dealing with hot weather, most of which revolve around tricking yourself and your guests into thinking that they’re not really melting into tiny liquid pools on the tatami mats. It falls under the deceptively simple heading of one of the seven rules of Rikyu: in the summer, suggest coolness.

In July and August tea people use utensils of cool-looking materials – glass is one that’s become popular in the past fifty years or so (which in tea terms makes it one of those newfangled innovations that them young ‘uns came up with). There are glass tea bowls, glass tea containers, glass tea scoops – almost any element of the tea ceremony can be done in glass. Other popular materials for the summer are dark wood and baskets, or anything unusual and playful. It’s no fun being serious when you’re hot, right?

There are also special kimonos for the hottest season of the year, made of a mesh fabric called “ro.” Of course, it’s good to choose colors that look cool, but the fabric itself also allows some breeze to come through, so instead of wearing body-covering underwear, a full-length under-robe, and a full-length kimono, it feels like you’re only wearing two layers of clothes in 95-degree weather. (Actually, I exaggerate – they do make ro kimono under-robes that, in combination with a ro kimono, do let the air in, and they’re a vast improvement over a normal kimono.)

However, Sasaki Sanmi’s tea almanac probably says it best: “Clear your mind of all mundane thoughts, and you will be able to find coolness. This is true; whether you can beat the hot weather or not depends on your state of mind.”

I’ll be raising a bowl of hot tea to you all!

Eido Roshi on Zen in Scrolls

2009-07-03T00:30:00.002-04:00

At the Friends in Tea gathering last month, Eido Roshi, the head of the Daibosatsu, gave a talk commenting on the meaning of some famous Zen phrases that are often used on tea scrolls. I wanted to share some of the things he said here. I did my best to take the notes as accurately as possible, but I know there are some things missing, so for that I apologize.

Ichigo Ichie

“This expression is so enormous that I don’t have to tell you anything. … It’s often translated, ‘one time, one meeting.’ Literally, that is not inaccurate, but my interpretation is ‘unprecedented and unrepeatable.’ We have never before met here – unprecedented. Most likely, six years from now, there may be new faces. Hence, unrepeatable.”

Wa Kei Sei Jaku

[Usually translated “harmony, respect, purity, tranquility,” Roshi translates the second character “reverence” and the last one “extinction.”]

“Wa, kei, sei, jaku is a beautiful expression, but this order is wrong. Jaku is another way to say ‘Nirvana,’ which in English means ‘extinction.’ . . . We have a lot of deceptions, delusions, illusions, and even subconscious preconceived ideas. It is perhaps too idealistic to think that all these will be gone. If that happens, then wa, kei, and sei will be gone, too. But assuming that the preconceived ideas are extinguished [jaku], then wa, kei, and sei will happen.

“Some people translate ‘jaku’ as ‘tranquility,’ but tranquility is temporary. Of course, everything is temporary, but tranquility is particularly temporary. It should be translated ‘extinction.’ “

Enso

[This is not a word, but simply a circle drawn in a single stroke.]

“There are many ways to write this, but [it’s important to] do it in one breath – no inhalation, no exhalation. Quicker is better, more tasty.”

The enso is often written with a “san,” a poem or capping phrase accompanying the image. Usually the person who does the image and the person writing the capping phrase are different. Three common san that are often written with the enso are:

Tsuki ka dango ka oke no wa ka (Is it a moon or a dumpling or the ring of a wooden pail?) – “You can write anything here. Is it a bagel, or a doughnut, or just sembe?”

Nore ni te yoshi (It’s all right as it is) – “It’s all right as it is, whether it’s crooked or a perfect circle. A perfect circle is not so tasty as a crooked one.”

Kore nanzo! (What is this!)

“A Rinzai Zen master was constantly asking his students, ‘Who is it that hears? Who is it that tastes?’ . . . The other day I saw a photo in the paper of a painting in the Boston Museum. The title was, ‘Where are we from? Who are we? Where are we going?’ On one side was a baby, in the middle a young, strong man, and standing at the end was an old lady crouching. This is exactly the question, ‘Kore nanzo?’ It is undoubtedly the greatest question we can ask while we are living in this incarnation.”

Nichi Nichi Kore Kojitsu [Every day is a good day]

Konnichi Kore Kojitsu [Today is a good day]

“There was a Zen master named Unmon who said to his monks, ‘I do not ask anything before the 15th day of the month, but I will say something after the 15th day.’ And one monk said, ‘Nichi nichi kore kojitsu.’ It’s easily misinterpreted.”

Konnichi Buji [Today, no agenda]

“The real meaning of buji is:
bu = no, negation
ji = event, matter, happening

“Looking at our lives, birth is an event. It’s not a no-matter. Getting old is an event. Sickness, passing away, too. From morning to night, all day long, event, event, event. Up to this point, it’s easy [to understand].

“A few years ago I was translating the Genzai Roku into English. This buji is one of the main themes of the Genzai Roku, and I thought it needed explanation.

“We tend to think that by doing various practices we can reach a point where delusions disappear, and we think there’s nothing else to do. This view is a deception. How could reality be altered by practice? Yet, you may ask, if buji implies doing nothing, then why do we have to practice? Isn’t ‘doing nothing’ in the usual passive sense of the phrase enough? At the same time, isn’t every being one ji? And isn’t our very being the source of all our problems that exist? Can we negate or transcend our own limited being? When we completely realize the true nature of the universe, what seems to be ji is nothing other than buji. No matter what we do, [it’s nothing].

“The closest English word to ‘buji’ is ‘now.’ Can you improve on now? Of course not. At this moment, can you or your circumstances be otherwise? When you understand that the present moment is all there is, you have no choice but to come to a radical acceptance, and this radical acceptance is the most difficult part.

“Buji means ‘one with suchness’ – the unconditional nature of being ready to be, with nothing wanting, nothing superfluous.

“To understand what I have just said is not so difficult, but radical acceptance is hard, and therefore we need practice.

“Konnichi buji means ‘today I accept this is what it is.’ This is a dilemma. We want to make progress, and therefore we think, the more we practice the better we get. We cannot deny that. In one thousand years of practicing Zen, ten thousand years of practicing tea, there’s never a day when you’re ready. It’s always, not yet, not yet, not yet. But today, this is it. When those two come together – not yet / this is it – there’s no word for that, so we have to say radical acceptance.”

Tozan Sui Jo Ko [East mountain always walks on water]

Kumpu Minami Yori Kitari [Fragrant wind comes from the south]

“Sanmon asked Unmon, ‘Where do all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas come from?’

“Unmon said, ‘Tozan sui jo ko.’”

“Another monk said, ‘I would not have said it like that. I would have said, Kumpu minami yori kitari.’

“This you can understand even rationally.”

Den Kaku Biryo wo Shozu [A subtle coolness pervades the dharma hall]

“When you enter a tearoom, the firs thing you see is the tokonoma, and what the scroll there says determines the main theme of the gathering. At this morning’s chakai, there was a scroll that read ‘Sei gin no yo cha o niru,’ ‘Reciting poetry at night, boiling tea.’ Nowadays in modern society we cannot appreciate such a scene. In Western history the ancient period ends about the fifth century, when the Roman Empire was finished. After that, for nine hundred years we are in the Dark Age. Gradually, the Renaissance took place in the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth centuries. From then on, things changed. In the eighteenth century, the Industrial Revolution was where life really changed – how long we live, how quickly we live. We forgot the memento mori [mementos of the dead]. This is where our tragedy began. There are improvements – we have modern civilization – but we also have to remember the memento mori. Even the mention of death is taboo [today]. This is really a serious matter.

“Okay, we are living in the modern age. Accept, appreciate. But it makes our minds artificially and mechanically unnatural. It makes it essential to come to Daibosatsu and set up the tearoom, even though you don’t chant or say poetry, to make an image of that through the imagination, we can go back to ancient days. This is what is the point of tea practice. . . .

“Truly these days, East and West are no longer distinguishable. Even the borders are becoming less and less. And for us, students of Zen and students of tea, what is really necessary is learning the nature of beauty and simplicity.

“For Rikyu, everything was beauty. Even his death was beauty for him.”

[Roshi referenced Rikyu’s death poem, his san, which is as follows:
Having lived for seventy years
I have now transcended my anger [toward Hideyoshi], totsu!
I have carried my treasure sword throughout my life
It could kill the Buddhas and the patriarchs
Now the time has come for me to throw it to heaven!]

Haku Un Onozukara Koraisu [White cloud comes and goes naturally]

Seizan Moto Fudo [Blue mountain does not move]

“There is a contrast here – white and blue. You can imagine the clouds and the mountain. But you have to think another way: not yet / this is it.

“Which one is the mountain? Which one is not yet? This is it.”

Friends in Tea

2009-06-21T23:13:00.001-04:00

Last week I was at a wonderful gathering of tea ceremony practitioners called Friends in Tea. It’s not sponsored by any one organization, or even any one school of tea ceremony – it’s a group of people who volunteer to put together a gathering every two years, always in a different place.

This time the gathering was held at the Dai Botsatsu Zendo, a Buddhist monastery in the Catskill Mountains in New York State. The setting is remote (about 20 miles from the nearest town, which itself is not that big) and beautiful – the monastery and its guest house overlook Beecher Lake, so named because the property used to be owned by the Beecher family (of Harriett Beecher Stowe fame).

The gathering was four days of workshops, discussions, and people doing tea for each other. Most of the participants had studied tea for a while, and so the idea behind the teas was not to worry about doing things perfectly, but to have fun drinking tea together. Some people got up at 6 a.m. to do chabako (picnic-style tea) outside; some people took tatami mats out to the patio to do tea out there. But probably my favorite story is about Eido Roshi coming for tea.

Eido Roshi is the head of the monastery and its partner Zen center in New York City. Whenever he comes into the room, everything else stops. He and some of the monks were invited to the opening tea gathering, but mid-way through the conference he paid us a surprise visit. Down in the main room of the guest house we had sign-up sheets for our “open tearoom” – people could sign up to either make tea or be a guest at someone else’s tea, depending on their preference. Roshi had signed up as a guest in a blank spot, meaning nobody had signed up to be a host yet. So, of course, we were obliged to find someone to make tea for him. No problem; we’re all tea people. The lucky host was Marjorie Yap, a tea teacher from Portland. However…

The open tearoom space was split into two sections. On one side was Roshi’s tea. On the other side, one of the other participants had signed up to do another tea. Now, I heard the stories afterwards second-hand, because I wasn’t there, but the way I heard it, while Roshi was sitting at a very quiet and serious koicha (thick tea) temae, on the other side of a set of shoji screens the second group was laughing and having a good time drinking usucha. Apparently every once in a while Roshi would look around as if to say, “Hey, I want to be over there where they’re having fun!”

After Roshi’s tea was finished, he came over to the other tea and sat in for a bit. They were using a huge Shino-ware bowl that actually belonged to Roshi’s personal collection (and which he allowed us to use for the conference). He told us that he had named the bowl “macho.” It’s not what you’re thinking. “Ma” here means “devil,” and “cho” means “transparent.” The idea is that drinking from the bowl makes your evil impulses fade more and more until they’re completely gone. (No word yet on whether it worked.)

More from Friends in Tea in posts to come…

Going to a Chaji

2009-06-05T23:09:00.001-04:00

This weekend, I was invited to a chaji put on by one of our teachers, Drew Hanson.

“Chaji” literally means something like “tea event,” and it’s considered the culmination of tea practice. It’s more formal than a chakai (“meeting for tea”), which has a more flexible format. In a chaji, everything is carefully determined. It starts with a meal that has a set number of courses. When the first course is brought in, each person gets a tray with two bowls and a plate. One bowl has rice, one bowl has soup, and the plate has sashimi. Once everybody has their tray, they simultaneously take the lids off the two bowls, put them together, and set them off to one side of the tray. From that point onward, each step is carefully choreographed: What’s in each course, when it enters the room, and how it is served. Even the guests have to pay attention to the timing, because they have to eat certain things by the time the next course is served.

If you’re the host, the food is by far the most stressful part. The menu is planned months in advance, and the cooking begins days in advance, because each element of the meal requires special preparation. And, because some courses are served hot, the host needs helpers in the kitchen to make sure everything is ready at exactly the right moment.

The food at this gathering, by the way, was wonderful. It was in a very traditional Japanese style, but there were vegetables from his garden as well as seafood and even some things imported from Japan.

After the food came the laying of the charcoal, which is done in front of the guests. As the fire builds, the smell of incense fills the room. With the fire going, the host served sweets. The sweets were in a hydrangea shape – bean paste dyed blue, grated, and arranged on top of a red bean paste center. Then little cubes of clear kinton (a gelatin-like substance) laced with gold leaf are put on top of it so that it looks like dew. They were really beautiful, but not too beautiful to eat!

After the sweets came the break. At that point, we’d been in the tearoom for about two and a half hours, and we were all ready for a standing break – sitting seiza for that long is no joke. During the break, the scroll in the alcove was replaced with a flower arrangement in a vase that Drew’s friend Brandon had made from local bamboo.

When we came back in, we had koicha, or thick tea, followed by thin tea. The utensils had been chosen to reflect a theme, which was water. The bowl for thin tea had fish painted on it, and the character for “ocean” on the bottom of the inside of the bowl. The tea container also had a wave pattern on it, and the lid-rest was in the shape of three fish.

But more than anything else, it’s the people who really make a gathering. Knowing the amount of preparation and care that went into everything that happened was really touching, and being able to share it with good company made it even better. It’s hard to describe how it feels, to be sitting in a tearoom, drinking in harmony with everyone else, soaking in every detail with every one of your senses. But by the end, there’s do doubt about why a chaji is considered the ultimate tea experience.

Tea Things

2009-05-06T23:56:00.000-04:00

After Yamada-sensei’s passing, I didn’t have a chance to write about the tea conference I was attending just before he died. It was an academic conference on tea ceremony hosted by Yale University, held in connection with an exhibition of rare tea ceremony utensils that had been donated to the university.

The conference had presenters from Japan and the U.S., including some experts in their field, and it was really interesting to get the different perspective on tea. For instance, one of the lectures was about the change in the types of ceramics that were found in archaeological digs from 16th century Japan, when the way of tea that we practice today was first starting to take hold. There was a much greater use in Japanese and Korean ceramics, where before the emphasis was on Chinese. Around the same time, there was a shift in the types of calligraphy used, away from Chinese poetry and towards a more Zen style, where the emphasis was on the way in which the characters were written rather than (or in addition to) the words themselves. There’s nothing surprising about that, of course, but it was fascinating to hear about how tea affected people’s daily life and collecting habits during that time period.

Most of the other lecture also centered around the objects used in tea, with the exception of one that I’ll talk about later. The focus on utensils wasn’t surprising, considering that we were at a museum, but it really made me stop and think about the way that tea practitioners approach doing tea.

On the one hand, tea philosophy emphasizes that objects are not the important thing – what’s important is the spirit that both host and guests bring to the gathering, and valuing the experience as it happens. On the other hand, tea practice also teaches us to respect the utensils that are used, to handle them carefully, and to show courtesy to the host by asking questions about each item. Respect for, and an understanding of, the utensils used in tea is an important part of the practice. The intent is to put the focus on the people behind the objects, not on the objects themselves, but in the real world, we end up talking a lot about the various utensils used, and in the process there’s a lot of emphasis put on objects.

That can have its good points. Making a tea bowl, for example, requires a lot of artistry, and I can’t help but think that a Japanese potter would get a kick out of knowing that somewhere on the other side of the planet, some crazy matcha-drinking Americans are oohing and aahing over his work. And from a historical perspective, the tea people who are lucky enough to own utensils from three or four hundred years ago might still use them, which is a tremendous opportunity for their guests to interact with the past.

On the other hand, I walked out of that conference wondering if maybe we talk too much about utensils and not enough about the way of tea itself. I think that sense of possessiveness is something that tea people really need to watch out for – just as the wonder of seeing a rare tea utensil is something to treasure.

In Memory: Hisashi Yamada

2009-04-21T23:27:00.001-04:00

Hisashi Yamada-sensei, the former head of Urasenke New York, passed away this weekend. He was a huge supporter of the tea program at La Salle – in fact, without his help, Brother Keenan might never have been able to set up the tea house there. So in a way, it’s thanks to him that any of our group are practicing tea at all.

I’m embarrassed to say that I know very little about his personal history. Mostly I remember him from his visits to La Salle, especially at our New Year’s tea gatherings. Whenever he came, he was always the first guest. I remember that he was always full of funny stories and insights into whatever was going on, and he could communicate equally well in Japanese and English, so that the guests were comfortable no matter what their native language.

I remember that he was the one who taught me the difference between taking lessons and having a tea gathering: in lessons, you work to get every detail right, and you worry about everything; in a gathering, it doesn’t matter if you make a mistake. All that matters is the moment, and that you’re doing your best for your guests. (And, as a guest, if the host makes a mistake, it doesn’t matter – let it pass, and go on to the next moment.)

Yamada-sensei’s warmth, generosity, and tea spirit touched many lives, and did so much to spread that way of tea here in the United States. I hope that he is remembered as he deserves to be, as a truly great man.

Sakura Sunday

2009-04-07T23:52:00.004-04:00

Sakura Sunday is the culmination of the Philadelphia Cherry Blossom Festival, a day of all types of Japanese cultural events – including tea ceremony, of course! We actually had two days of demonstrations, a private event at the Japanese House on Saturday, and the free public demonstrations on Sunday.

We were incredibly lucky with the weather. Normally, Philadelphia’s Cherry Blossom Festival is held a week after the one in Washington, D.C. In Washington, it’s just enough warmer than Philly that usually the timing turns out perfectly. However, this year Washington’s is the third weekend in April, and the second weekend in April is, of course, Easter. So Philadelphia’s was the first weekend in April, and we were all concerned that it would be too early for the actual cherry blossoms. But the week before we had a nice warm spell, and the day of the festival was clear, sunny, and in the 60s, so the trees were just starting to bloom.

Here’s a photo of the blossoms:

The public demonstrations went really well. We had two demos, and since there was only limited space in the room where we set up, the festival organizers had sign-up sheets. We not only filled up the space, but had people sitting on the floor to get in. The teas were done by Mariko-sensei, with Drew (in green kimono, with his back to the camera) demonstrating how to be the guest, myself narrating, and some help from students Mary Lynn (blue kimono) and Terry (pink kimono), and tea friend Brandon (kneeling to take a photo in this picture).

The guests seemed to really enjoy the tea, and asked a lot of good questions. It was great to be able to connect with them!

After the tea, it was almost closing time for the festival, but we all got to walk around for a little while and admire the day. Along the way, someone snapped a photo of three mysterious tea people in kimono:

A Memorial Tea

2009-03-30T23:34:00.002-04:00

On Sunday we held a memorial tea in honor of Brother Joseph Keenan.

Brother Keenan was a member of the Christian Brothers and a professor of religion at La Salle University. In the 1980s, he became interested in tea ceremony and began studying at the New York branch of Urasenke, and spent a year studying in Japan. He was so passionate about tea ceremony that he convinced the university to allow one of the historic buildings on campus to be converted into a tea house, for which the Urasenke headquarters in Kyoto and the branch in New York donated the labor, the construction supplies, and the utensils. In the following years, hundreds of La Salle students and several dozen more members of the public got a chance to learn tea ceremony thanks to the university’s tea program, and countless more experienced demonstrations either at the university or performed by members of the tea program.

I was one of the La Salle students who took his class, and so he was my first tea teacher. I’ll never forget his sense of humor. It’s traditional at the end of each lesson to thank the teacher; he always used to joke that we had to thank him “whether you want to or not.” He started tea late in life, and after a while he had to have a knee replacement, but that didn’t stop him; he just sat on a hassock and kept going. He even took on extra hours of teaching and bought tea utensils with his own money to keep the program going.

In 1999, Brother Keenan died, the victim of a hit-and-run car accident. Teachers and students banded together to keep the program alive, and even after the university decided to end the program in 2007, we moved to Shofuso and kept whisking.

This year was the 10th anniversary of Brother Keenan’s death, and so we had a memorial tea for him. There were a number of students we couldn’t find, but our first guest was one of the early teachers at Urasenke La Salle, Yumiko Pakenham, and another one was the first student, Mariko Ono.

The gathering was very similar in format to a normal tea gathering, except that the tokonoma (the alcove where the scroll is hung and flowers arranged), there was no only a scroll but a portrait of Brother Keenan. On a small stand in front of the photo there was a vase with a flower arrangement and some space where tea and sweets would go later.

It was raining early in the day as everyone gathered. We started with hanayose, in which people who knew Brother Keenan came up and took flowers from a tray, arranging some in the vases that lined the tokonoma. We skipped the formal arrangement of charcoal in front of the guests (although we did use charcoal for the fire) and went straight into the food. Once the guests had eaten, there was a short break, and the sun actually came out! The air started to warm up and dry all the puddles, and it turned into a beautiful day.

After the break, Taeko-sensei made koicha (thick tea). The first bowl was presented to Brother Keenan (placed on the stand in front of his picture) and then she made tea for the guests. After koicha, usucha (thin tea) was prepared by Mariko-sensei, with some extra whipped in the kitchen by the assistants.

At the end of the gathering, we all took a little time to share memories of Brother Keenan before we went our separate ways. It was wonderful to be able to spend the time with some old friends, and also to share the memories. Without him, there would be no tea ceremony in the Philadelphia area. I hope he was looking down on us today and happy to know that the tradition is still strong.

Real People

2009-03-19T23:54:00.001-04:00

The other day a reporter from the Philadelphia Inquirer e-mailed us wanting to do an article about tea ceremony. “Fantastic!” I thought. And then she said that she didn’t want to talk to any of our teachers or advanced students, but that what she was really looking for were “real people.”

So I pondered that for a bit, and I decided that it was probably just as well that I wasn’t a real person, because unreality is much more fun.

The reporter went on to explain that what she was looking for was a Westerner’s perspective on tea ceremony, and specifically someone from one of our beginner courses. No problem. I connected with her over the phone, and got her contact information for some of the people who went through our beginner’s course last year.

On Saturday, she came to Shofuso to observe our weekly lessons along with a photographer, who was Japanese (it turns out his father had studied tea ceremony, but he had no interest himself). The photographer was snapping away, and she sat in the corner, asking questions, but mostly just taking notes. She watched one of the students drink a bowl of tea, and then we offered one to her. She picked it up, sniffed it, took a sip, and said, “Well, it looks bad, smells awful, and tastes horrible. Why do people do this again?”

It was at this point that I started to become just a little bit afraid about the outcome of the article.

But we reassured her that there were, in fact, people who enjoyed drinking matcha in the world. We finished up the lesson and talked for a bit more about the practice of tea, and especially about the sweets, since she’s from the Food section.

The reporter did follow up with me later in the week to ask some questions about my tea experience. In situations like that I always feel inadequate. How do I convey what tea means to me in a way that makes sense to someone who’s never done it? I mean, I can talk until I’m blue in the face about inner tranquility and mental focus and liking the taste of tea, but it does really explain why I’ve spent nearly fifteen years of my life practicing tea ceremony?

The same question came up at a gathering of tea people a few years ago – why do we study tea? I struggled with the question for a bit, and finally the only answer I could come up with was, “Because it’s necessary.” They all understood.

The article for the Inquirer is scheduled to come out on March 26. That’s not guaranteed, of course, because editorial schedules change, but keep your eyes on the paper that day, just in case.

Contemporary Tea Houses

2009-02-24T21:54:00.002-05:00

Recently, I got a copy of The Contemporary Tea House: Japan’s Top Architects Redefine a Tradition by Arata Isozaki, Tadao Ando, and Terunobu Fujimori, and I’ve been eating it up.

I should preface this by saying that anybody who studies tea ceremony – and probably some people who don’t! – inevitably start dreaming about having their own tea space. Regardless of whether we have the room or the money, or even if we have a tearoom or tea house already, we all have a plan in the back of our mind of what we would do if…

The great thing about this book is that it gives us all fuel to dream. The premise is pretty much what the title implies – several very well-known and talented architects re-envision tearooms. Some of them are in urban settings, like the loft in an apartment, or even the roof of a house in the city. Some of them are out in the country, built to blend with their surroundings. Some of them are very modern, made of concrete or plastic, while others are made of the more traditional plaster and wood.

I’m not saying that I like all of them. One of them looks like it was tastefully placed in a public restroom. (No names, but if you read the book, you’ll be able to pick it out.) And even the ones that I do like are only marginally usable.

For example, my favorite is Takasugi-an, which is literally a tea house on trees. Take a look here. The house is nineteen feet in the air, and according to the book, it “sways as much as one would expect when looking at it from outside.” I love the idea, but can you imagine trying to climb up that ladder in a kimono? Carrying tea utensils? And once you’re inside the tearoom, things don’t get much better. Because of the way the space is arranged, if you wanted to do a traditional tea ceremony, you’d have to sit with your back to the guests.

That’s a pretty common feature of the tearooms in the book – about half of them would require some major adaptation to use them for tea ceremony. But that’s okay, because practicality isn’t the point. The point is to inspire people to do what they can with the space they have, and to really challenge people’s image of how a tearoom should look. In the end, they share one commonality – a sense of tranquility and space, a place where you can go to sit and enjoy tea.

Anyhow, I highly recommend the book if you’re interested in tearooms, or even if you just want to look at some pretty pictures.

"Green" Ash

2009-01-21T23:05:00.000-05:00

The following post was written by Drew Hanson.

One of the advantages of living in a house with a wood-burning fireplace and using it regularly during the winter season is the seemingly endless supply of ash that is produced. For some people, the thought of having to deal with ash is so repugnant that they install ‘instant-on’ gas fireplaces instead. I, on the other hand, revel in my good fortune. Not only have I judiciously incorporated ash into my garden soil, but I’ve also used it to make an ash glaze for my ceramic pieces. Most recently, however, I’ve recycled my ash in a new way by making batches of shimeshibai, the moist ash which is used on top of the basic ash formation in the ro (sunken hearth used in the tearoom in the wintertime).

During the ro season, I use charcoal almost exclusively in my sunken hearth. My choice to heat water in this way requires that I have a ready supply of moist ash. In the past, I ordered bags of ash from Japan and processed it in the traditional way into shimeshibai. This year, I decided to ‘do it myself.’

Like so many processes in tea, making shimeshibai is labor intensive; however, the end product is well worth the investment of time and energy. Its color is rich, and its fragrance is earthy and slightly spicy. And there’s the added pleasure of having used the fireplace ash in a ‘green’ way.

Here’s how I make my shimeshibai from ‘scratch.’

I don’t remove ash from the fireplace after each use. Rather, I pile it in the back corners, making ‘mountains’ similar to those that are created when ash is arranged in the ro. These mountains help to direct air flow down and under the burning logs, insuring a steady, hot flame. (I use my fireplace as a supplementary heat source.) More importantly, as the mountains grow with new additions of ash, their weight compacts the ash closer to their bottoms. This compacted ash is the ash I use for shimeshibai.

I carefully shovel out a bucketful from the bottom of one or both the mountain and then begin to sift it. First, I use a wide mesh sieve to remove any large cinders and other debris. Next, the ash is sifted through a medium mesh sieve. I use a regular kitchen strainer that I purchased for this purpose. Finally, I put the ash through the traditional Japanese sieve designed for ro ash. The difference in texture from first to last sifting is truly amazing.

Now it’s time to wash the ash. As I fill the bucket with water, I stir the mixture. Immediately, the very fine ash particles—the ‘flyaways’ as it were—start coming to the surface. I skim off these particles, and when the ash settles, I pour off the top water (which in itself may be used to water house plants) and refill the bucket. I continue filling, stirring, skimming and pouring until no more particles come to the surface. I fill the bucket with water one more time.

Next, I line a colander with a large piece of cotton fabric which I wet and wring out. Typically, I use a large kitchen towel made from a flour sack. I set the lined colander on top of another bucket, stir the ash/water mixture and pour it into the colander where it will drain for a day. On day two, I squeeze out any water remaining in the ash and dump the wet blob into a plastic dish pan.

I now bring approximately two and a half quarts of water to the boil, throw in a handful of houjicha and some whole cloves (10-12) and let the brew boil slowly for half an hour. I strain the tea over the ash and stir it well. The tea leaves and cloves go into the compost.

For the next three or four days, whenever I pass the ‘ash tea’ I give it a stir. Initially, the layer of ash is very difficult to incorporate into the liquid. However, over time it becomes easier, and after the second day of soaking, I can see that the ash has begun to change color. Four days into this part of the process, it’s time to drain the ash again. As I did the first time, I set up the colander, wet towel and bucket. I give the ash tea one final stir and then pour. This time I let the ash drain for two days and then dump it into the plastic pan and break it up into pieces.

Over the next several days, the pieces of ash will slowly begin to dry. I monitor the drying process very carefully, continuing to break the chunks down into smaller pieces. When the ash feels damp to the touch, not wet, it’s time to start working with it. I don a pair of rubber gloves and rub handfuls of ash between my palms. At this point, the ash resembles damp, dark cornmeal. After all the ash has been rubbed, I bring out the sieves and begin to sift it all again. This time, however, I use only two sieves—medium and fine mesh. I put the ash through the medium mesh twice, wait a day and then put it through the fine mesh.

Voila! Shimeshibai . . .

And only 10-12 days have gone by!

The Gift of Tea

2009-01-10T17:44:00.000-05:00

This past holiday season made me think about giving presents in the context of tea. I’m not talking about giving or receiving tea items (though that’s always nice!), but a way of thinking about tea: hosting a tea gathering for someone as a kind of “gift.”

As a student, when I started learning how to plan a tea gathering, my teachers told me that the most important thing to think about is your guests. What kind of food would your guests like to eat? What kind of bowl would they like to drink tea from? What would be meaningful for them?

It sounds easy, but it’s really not. When you practice tea, you gradually start to develop your own aesthetic. For example, some people really like colorful or playful tea utensils; some people prefer utensils that are asymmetrical, cracked, or even outright ugly, but which embody the wabi aesthetic that’s so valued by tea practitioners. Some people prefer exclusively Japanese utensils, while some prefer the creative challenge of sourcing local items that can be used in tea ceremony.

Is it better to hang a scroll in Japanese calligraphy that your guests can’t read, or a scroll written in English that’s aesthetically at odds with a Japanese-style room? The answer is to put yourself in your guests’ shoes, think about their experiences in tea, and do you best to choose what you think they would appreciate.

As the host, the temptation to show off during a tea gathering is enormous. It starts with good intentions – we’re all taught, from the first day we practice, that we should use try to use special utensils for our gatherings for the sake of our guests, to give them a memorable experience. And as new students, we can all remember the sense of wonder when our teachers brought out their rare, beautiful, artisan-made items. Experienced students know when the host brings out a special bowl or tea container, and they truly treasure the opportunity to hold it in their hands. When the time comes to host a gathering, we’re tempted to bring out our own favorite items, to share them with our fellow tea people.

So where’s the line between bringing out a tea bowl because you like it, and bringing it out because you think your guests will like it? Or, to put it a different way, where’s the line between serving your guests and serving your own ego? Can you put your personal preferences aside for the sake of your guests, if you know your guests would like something different? As a host, can you truly put your heart into making tea in a bowl you don’t like?

I struggle with this myself sometimes. But I truly believe that being able to put your guests’ taste first – to be able to make tea in a bowl that they like but that you don’t – is one of the keys to becoming a true tea person.

Last Class of the Year

2008-12-20T12:34:00.001-05:00

Last Saturday was our final class of 2008. It’s really amazing to see the change in the house over the seasons. In the summer, we open all the doors and have lessons in the 15-mat room to take advantage of as much air circulation as we can manage. In the wintertime, we’re all shut into the small tearoom, and even the doors that we’d normally have open are shut to keep the heat in. The house gets incredibly quiet – all the better to hear the water boiling in the kettle. It feels like the rest of the world is a thousand miles away.

The past couple of weekends the tsukubai – the water basin outside the tearoom where guests can wash their hands before coming in – had a thin sheet of ice on the top. The pond wasn’t quite frozen, but getting there. Inside, we were trying to think warm thoughts while we waited for the tea water to heat up. The tearoom does have electricity, but not heat, so the outlets have to support not only the electrical element for the kettle but a space heater also. Sometimes they don’t play well together.

But on the last class, all of our regular students were able to make it, and we had a lovely surprise visit from one we hadn’t seen in a while. The students from our beginner’s class were just wrapping up a twelve-week introduction to tea, and they did a fantastic job. It’s always fun to watch their transition from knowing nothing about tea to being able to do a tea ceremony from beginning to end. It gave everything a feeling of completion.

We’ve got a long winter break coming up, but that doesn’t mean that there’s no tea. Everybody practices in their own way, from doing tea on their own to studying books to working on their cooking or sweet-making. And we’ve got the memory of the warmth in the tearoom to carry us through the New Year. I with you all the same joy and good company throughout the holidays!

Warmth in Your Hand

2008-11-30T16:18:00.002-05:00

I heard a story on the radio the other day about a psychological study done by Yale University. The study showed that people who are holding something warm in their hands are more likely to perceive other people as “warm,” and therefore more likely to behave in a friendly, generous way. Here’s a link if you want to read the whole story.

Of course, I immediately thought of tea. In the tearoom, when a guest is about to drink a bowl of tea, they rest the bowl on their left hand and wrap their right hand around the side for support, so the bowl is less likely to fall.

If the guests are in the proper frame of mind—that is, if they’ve been watching the host prepare the tea, and allowed their mind to slip into the harmony of the movements—then they’re already in a heightened state of awareness. It’s hard to describe, but the tea tastes different when it’s drunk as part of a tea ceremony. You taste more of the nuances, whether the tea is fresh and grassy or more earthy and complex; whether it was whipped into a thick foam or whether it’s thinner and more woody. You feel the shape of the bowl in your hand, whether the shoulder at the bottom is round or square, whether the texture is rough or smooth, whether the clay around the rim is thick or thin.

Of course, that’s the ideal. If you study tea ceremony with a teacher, then the vast majority of the time you’re drinking tea in a classroom setting. Everybody has their good days and their bad days, the times when they’re paying attention and the times when they’re just going through the motions. That affects the taste of the tea, too. I know if it’s been a while since I’ve had matcha, I approach my first bowl with much more attention (and gratitude!) than my third or fourth bowl of the day.

But I think there really is something visceral about sitting with your hands wrapped around a warm bowl of tea, something that’s comforting even when it’s 90 degrees outside and the room isn’t air conditioned. I never thought about it before, but I think that the warmth of the liquid does add to the experience of drinking tea. Everything combines to give us a feeling of fellowship as we drink the tea together, and isn’t that the goal?

And since I was drinking a nice cup of sencha as I wrote this, I’ll be thinking of you all warmly until next time…

Robiraki Accomplished!

2008-11-18T22:41:00.001-05:00

Sunday was our Robiraki gathering. The day before it had been rainy but amazingly warm, up close to 70 degrees. We were crossing our fingers that the weather would hold out, but overnight the temperature plummeted. Sunday was sunny with highs in the 50s, which was okay, except for the gusts of chilly wind.

We had to keep a close eye on the weather because the site where we held the gathering – also the place where we hold our lessons – has no central heating (or plumbing, for that matter, which is a challenge all its own). It’s a reproduction of a 16-century Japanese house with a garden and koi pond. It’s a beautiful place to be at any time of year, and by a tiny Robiraki miracle, some of the maple leaves held on to add some color to the garden. One of our big fears was that the weather would turn freezing suddenly, and that our guests would be so cold they couldn’t enjoy themselves. (The house is wired with electricity, so we can use space heaters, but they aren’t much help in the big room.) But fortunately, the weather was fine, especially with a charcoal fire in the middle of the gathering. That sumi kicks out a lot of heat!

The crew of hosts and servers arrived at 9 a.m. to open the house and begin setting up. We had to carry all our tea utensils and serving dishes into the house, as well as the food itself. The tea utensils were set up in the kitchen of the tearoom, and we put tables on the veranda near the door to set up our serving area. It was convenient for serving, but we had the occasional wind gust sending things blowing away and keeping us on our toes.

There’s always little glitches that happen on the day of a gathering. Somebody forgets some crucial piece of equipment, somebody forgets to set up something in the tearoom, or the preparations take too long and you’re just not ready by the time the guests arrive. Amazingly, not one of those things happened this time. We did have a guest come who we weren’t expecting, but that worked out, since another guest never arrived. The number of guests is actually a major concern, because when you’re serving food, the trays are set up for the exact number of people who are coming. An extra person can throw the entire gathering off if the hosts don’t have enough food or extra trays. (If there’s one person too few, the kitchen helpers just eat the extra food.)

The guests arrived just before noon and gathered in the waiting area. Just as we were about to begin, our big glitch – the fire alarm went off! There was no fire, fortunately; the fire alarms at the house are equipped with particle detectors, and as nearly as we could tell, it was being set off by the particles carried in by the wind, which was unusually strong. Fortunately, we got it shut off quickly, and we began without a hitch.

Due to a fractured leg, I can’t sit seiza (kneeling) right now, so for the first time in many years, I wasn’t able to come into the tearoom to do tea or even to serve the food. It was hard for me to judge how things were going in the room, but based on reports from Drew and Mary Lynn, who laid the charcoal and prepared the tea, everything went fine.

The gathering started with the laying of the charcoal, followed by serving the meal. The food in the bento box was served cold, but it was followed by a serving of soup. The soup is tricky, because it includes dumpling that have to be warmed beforehand, and it has to be served piping hot in the tearoom. So once the guests got their initial serving of food, we had to rush to get the soup into the bowls and out to the guests before it got too cold.

In a more formal gathering, there would be several more courses of food, but we decided to keep it simple so that the gathering didn’t take too long. This time of year, it starts getting dark around 4:30 in the afternoon, and the house has (you guessed it) no electric lights.

After the food, we served sweets in anticipation of drinking the thick tea, or koicha. Then there was a break.

The break was supposed to be fairly brief, but just as we were breaking, the fire alarm went off again, and this time nothing we did would make it shut off. Half an hour and many phone calls later, we finally got the system shut down and could go on!

The next phase was thick tea, which was made by Drew. Usually, the host makes tea for everybody in the same bowl, and the bowl is passed around, with everybody sharing. Because there were so many people at this gathering, we did a variation in which you use two bowls, the first one for the first half of the guests, and the second one for the second half.

Once the thick tea was served, there was thin tea, or usucha. This tea was prepared by one of our students, Mary Lynn – her first time making tea during a gathering like this, and she did a great job. I assisted in whipping extra bowls of tea in the kitchen so that she didn’t have to do all 13 by herself, although I think she could have done it if she needed to!

After that, the gathering was over. It was just around 3:30, and after we said our final goodbyes, we really had to race the darkness to get everything cleaned and packed up before it got too dark to see. We did it, though, and just as the final light left the sky, we locked up and headed off on our separate ways, happy that the guests all enjoyed themselves and had some good tea.

Preparing for a Gathering

2008-11-14T23:31:00.000-05:00

This week, our tea group is in the middle of preparations for an annual celebration called Robiraki. November is the month when we switch from summer season, when we heat the water in a raised brazier, to the winter season, when we use a sunken hearth. Normally, this celebration is held at the very beginning of November, but because of various schedule conflicts, we put it off until this weekend.

In a lot of ways, Robiraki is like the “New Year” of the tea world. The weather is getting colder, the last of the leaves are falling, and we’re just cracking open the tea that was harvested this past spring. Unlike the calendar New Year in January, which is a flashy, festive occasion, Robiraki is more subdued – it’s a time to embrace the season and look ahead to the bare coldness of winter.

Planning a tea gathering is a lot like planning a large party – there’s the guest list to coodinate, invitations to send, food to cook, and an added dimension, utensils to choose. Every item that’s used in the gathering, from the tea scoop and tea container to the scroll that hangs in the alcove, is carefully chosen to fit the season, and it all has to match – not in the sense of being the same color or pattern, but in the sense of being harmonious when you put them next to each other. For example, you wouldn’t want to put a very small tea bowl next to a very large tea container, because the proportions would look strange. You also wouldn’t want to put something bright and colorful next to something that was very worn and dull – the “mood” of the pieces needs to match, too.

The past couple of days for me have been all about food. I’m sharing the cooking responsibilities with Drew, one of the other teachers, but there’s still a lot to do. Even shopping can be a challenge. We try to incorporate as much traditional Japanese food as possible into our gatherings, but there are a lot of things that we just can’t get here. I’m lucky that there’s a small Japanese grocery store not too far from my neighborhood, and a larger Korean grocery store nearby. If we’re doing a big meal for the gathering, we trek up to New York, where there’s an even larger Japanese grocery store called Mitsuwa. However, that’s about a two-hour drive each way, so I don’t go very often.

Yesterday was shopping – running around and getting all the various foods we’ll need – and today I did most of the cooking. The most time-consuming thing was cutting the carrots; I’m trying out a new flower design that was meant to look like a chrysanthemum. I’m not sure it succeeded, but we’ll see how it goes over with my co-hosts on the day of the gathering.

Tonight I sifted the tea (two different kinds), and also the ash for the hearth. We’re using charcoal to heat the tea instead of electricity, which means that a couple of days ago, I washed the charcoal so there’s no excess dust (dust can create sparks, which are a big no-no in a room covered with dry grass mats!). Drew has been washing a portion of the ash so that it’ll still be moist when he lays the fire in front of the guests (creating a color contrast).

There’s still more to do tomorrow, but the biggest challenge is to make sure that we don’t forget to bring anything on the day of the gathering. Wish us luck!

October Tea

2008-10-23T21:54:00.000-04:00

The leaves are changing colors in our area now, a stunning visual reminder that the weather is getting colder and that soon, the trees will be bare and the snow will be falling.

In the tearoom, we’re also experiencing a transition. In October – and only in October –tea practitioners have the option of doing a style of tea called “Nakaoki.” Nakaoki literally means “placing in the middle,” which is a reference to the location of the furo, the brazier which holds the fire.

So let’s take a moment to review. In the wintertime, the fire is contained in a sunken pit in the middle of the floor called a ro. That way, the fire is close to the guests, and helps them to keep warm (very important in the days before central heating!). In the summertime, the fire is moved to a raised brazier called a furo and moved away from the guests to help them keep cool. (If you’re thinking, “What about the host?” the answer is, the host suffers. That’s his job.)

In Nakaoki, the furo finds a middle ground – directly in front of the host, closer to the guest but still not too close for a warm October day. That affects the position of all the other utensils, of course, but for the guest, the net effect is the same: the water is boiled, the tea whisked, and the wonderous beverage served.

There are little seasonal practices like this in almost every season, each designed in their own way to accommodate the weather conditions. But October is a particularly special month, not only because of the changing of the leaves (giving tea people an opportunity to do chabako, or picnic-style tea) but because it’s the transition from summer to winter season. November, when the sunken hearth is opened, is kind of like the “New Year” of tea ceremony (although we also celebrate the calendar New Year in January). It’s the time when the tea which was picked earlier this year is ground into powder and used for the first time.

But there will be time to think about that later. Right now, the mornings are crisp, the sun is radiant on the changing leaves, and tea people everywhere are enjoying a special taste of October. Come join us!

Depth of Field

2008-10-01T20:34:00.002-04:00

The following post was written by Drew Hanson, one of the tea instructors at Shofuso.

In tea (as in life in general) revelations can occur when they’re least expected. Walking down to the tea house yesterday—a walk I’ve taken hundreds of times—I was suddenly struck by the almost uncanny visual ‘depth of field’ I was looking into after making the last turn on the path leading from the middle garden to the lower garden. Finally, after almost 11 years, the mature landscape made sense.

Oh, from the beginning, we were very careful in our selection of plant materials and their placement in this part of the garden, which in a more classical Japanese setting would be called the roji. Our tea house, Boukakuan, sits in a very dark corner of the property, shaded by massive, almost 300-year old sycamore trees.

Because of a series of turns, the path to the tea house seems longer than it really is. But it’s what one sees after making that last turning that justifies the agony of choosing plants and shrubs and the seemingly endless wait for them to mature. We wanted to create the illusion of distance and to ‘manufacture’ light at the same time. Making the first happen was easy. The second was more of a challenge.

But we met it. We decided to harness the power of ‘reflective’ light both to illuminate and give depth to the garden. Plants with leaf variegation: green and white, green and cream, green and yellow; all have found their way into the landscape design, offsetting and enriching the solid greens and blue greens of already existing plantings. Choosing them, however, was the hard part. We live in agricultural zone 6A/B and have to contend with cold (but not frigid) winter temperatures and hot, humid and often (in the last few years anyway) dry summer conditions.

Ultimately we selected variegated broad leaf evergreens like Acuba japonica and Osmanthus heterophyllus ‘Goshiki,’ mixed in a variegated cedar and several grasses like Miscanthus sinensis ‘Zebrinus’ as well as deciduous woody shrubs displaying unusual variegation, a non-invasive Japanese Fleeceflower and Boehmeria nipononvea ‘Kogane Mushi,’ for example. But all our specimens were babies, none more than a foot tall. How was it all going to look? Would we get the effects we were hoping for?

In landscaping, a rule of thumb is: visualize the garden as it will look in five years, position the plant materials accordingly, put them in the ground and wait. We did. What we also did well in advance of setting out the plants was to consider the sun’s movement, its relative position in the sky in both summer and winter. Remember: we wanted to bring as much reflected light into the garden as possible.

Faith got us through the first five years. The babies grew, but our goal wasn’t going to be reached for another few years. And yesterday I got it! I really got it! Rounding that last turn, I saw the tea house in the ‘distance,’ nestled in its dark corner, illuminated by the reflected light of the plants surrounding it and looking for all the world as if it had been there for as long as our house has been on the property, and that’s 233 years.

Being a Guest

2008-09-21T23:01:00.001-04:00

In tea ceremony there’s a lot of emphasis on being the host – learning the right moves to prepare tea for people, knowing the sequence, the little tricks of movement that make everything flow. But guests have an equally important role. It’s also structured in that there are certain things that need to be done at certain times, but there’s a lot more freedom. In some ways, that can make it even harder to be a guest than to be a host.

In tea training, when we talk about state of mind, we always emphasize that both host and guest should strive for harmony in the room. Guests should avoid talking about subjects that might cause tension – no religion, no politics, no gossiping about other people. The mood should be light, and ideally, the conversation should focus on things in the room, the occasion for the gathering, or the season.

The role of the first guest is crucial. The first guest, shokyaku in Japanese, is the guest of honor. They sit in the position closest to the host, and they are the first person to be served the tea. But the first guest also has more responsibility than the other guests: He or she has to keep the flow of the gathering going by giving the host the proper cues at the proper time, and at the same time, is responsible for keeping the conversation going in the tearoom. If all of the guests know each other well, that last part is easy; if not, it can be difficult, especially if there’s a mixture of Japanese speakers and English speakers in the room who know very little of the other language.

The other day someone asked me, “I know the goal is to keep the conversation in the room harmonious, but what happens if someone doesn’t? What if someone says or does something offensive?”

That’s not an easy question to answer, because, like any social situation, a lot depends on the people in the gathering. In theory, any of the guests who sense that there’s some awkwardness should try to smooth things over – change the subject, or possible give the offender a quiet nudge. In practice, that’s not as easy as it sounds. Sometimes a gathering fails, not in the sense of ending early, but in the sense of the guests not having a good time. That’s one reason why, as a host, it’s important to choose your guests carefully, and why as a guest it’s important to put other people’s feelings ahead of your own. That’s not always an easy lesson to learn, but it’s at the heart of tea.

Taian

2008-08-15T23:18:00.001-04:00

One of the highlights of my trip to Japan was a visit to Taian. Taian is the oldest surviving tea house built by Sen no Rikyu, the founder of the lineage for most of the active tea schools in Japan today, including Urasenke.

Rikyu lived over 400 years ago, and his most famous accomplishments happened toward the end of his life, when he served as the tea master for Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the military ruler of Japan. One of those accomplishments was Taian – not because it was large or beautiful, but exactly the opposite, because it was the epitome of wabi.

I could write a whole post about wabi, and I probably will at some point, but for the moment I’ll sum up by saying that it’s the fundamental aesthetic underlying tea ceremony. It means seeking beauty in simplicity and bareness, in the natural scars and wear marks of an old pot or basket rather than the gleaming shine of a new one, in the imperfection of a tea bowl that’s cracked or assymetrical rather than perfectly round and identical to countless others. In terms of tearooms, it means using the simple, humble materials of a country hut rather than the exquisite paintings and expensive woods and fabrics of a nobleman’s castle.

Taian is a two-tatami-mat room, which means it’s approximately six feet square, plus a tokonoma (an alcove) that’s a little more than three feet square. There’s a small nijiriguchi (kneeling entrance), so called because the only way to get through it is to slide in on your knees, and covered windows that let in a subdued light. The guests would walk through the garden, take their shoes off, and come in through the nijiriguchi; the host would come in through a separate entrance from an adjoining space that has a single tatami mat (three feet by six) plus a wooden board running the length of the mat, which was used to hold the utensils that were waiting to be carried into the room. Beyond that is the actual preparation area (mizuya). Here’s a link to a site with a description and some photos.

I said that I visited Taian, but actually, I visited two Taians – the original, which at some point in its history was moved to Myokian Temple outside of Kyoto – and a reproduction which was built on the grounds of the Zuiho-in subtemple at Daitokuji Temple in Kyoto. The original is closed to visitors; you can only look in from the outside. The reproduction, however, we were allowed to go inside. That’s crucial, because like so many things in tea, it’s the experience that makes the difference.

Six feet by six feet doesn’t sound like a lot of space, and from the outside it doesn’t look like a lot of space, either, but once you sit inside, it feels almost spacious. There’s room for one or two guest, maybe three if you squeeze. The host makes tea on the other mat, with a small ro (sunken hearth) cut into the corner of the mat, away from the guests. (In a larger room, the sunken hearth would be in the middle of the room, giving host and guest more room to maneuver.)

In a typical tea room, there would be at least a half-mat space between the host and the guest. In a two-mat room like Taian, you’re right next to each other. There’s nowhere to hide – every move the host makes is right there for everyone to see. It’s a much more intimate feeling, and I can image how much more so it would be if there was only one guest.

Rikyu built Taian for Hideyoshi – it was originally located in Hideyoshi’s castle at Yamazaki – but Hideyoshi never had tea there. Other people were invited, and in fact, some elements of the reproduction differ from the original based on notes from tea people of Rikyu’s day who had tea there. Sitting in the reproduction, I could imagine someone coming in through the nijiriguchi, sitting in front of the alcove, sharing the experience of making the tea with the host, neither person needing to say a word.

The whole experience brought me a little bit closer to the world where tea ceremony was born – a little bit of insight to take home and build into my own tea experience.

The Grand Master's Tea

2008-07-17T23:08:00.000-04:00

One of the highlights of my trip to Japan was the opportunity to watch the Grand Master (Oiemoto) of Urasenke, Zabosai, do tea. The occasion was a kencha, a tea offering to Shinto deities. Oiemoto does them several times per year, and I just happened to be at Midorikai during one of them.

This particular one was at Omi Jingu, a Shinto shrine in the foothills surrounding Kyoto. Omi Jingu contains a shrine to Emperor Tenji, who was the first emperor to put a clock in the Imperial Palace. This shrine (and this gathering) is thought to be especially good for people who need to be on time.

We gathered at Urasenke and rode a bus out to the shrine, arriving, in proper tea fashion, ridiculously early. The Midorikai group was joined by the students from the Japanese-language program, all of us in our formal montsuki kimonos (with a crest embroidered on the back of the neck, just underneath the collar). We went up a set of stairs to a rectangular courtyard, where there was a raised platform with tatami (woven grass) mats and tea utensils set up for Oiemoto, and benches around the edges. We sat off to one side; there were various VIPs in the seats next to the platform. I was in a spot where I could actually see Oiemoto do tea, which I gather is pretty unusual.

It’s hard to describe the experience. I mean, in the back of your mind, there’s an awareness that this is The Man, at least in the Urasenke world – the heir to the family tradition, a man who’s been doing tea ceremony since he was old enough to hold a tea scoop. From that perspective, his tea is almost ordinary. But there’s a kind of quiet power behind all of his movements; you simultaneously get the sense that he’s done this a thousand times before and that he’s completely focused on every move and detail.

The kencha itself was done in the context of a Shinto ritual. A line of Shinto priests in white preceded Oiemoto into the shrine, and one of them ritually called on the gods and blessed the people there. Oiemoto prepared the tea, and then he carried the bowl across the courtyard and up the second set of steps to the shrine area, where one of the priests was waiting. I couldn’t see what he did up there, but then he came back down and made a second bowl of tea, which was likewise carried up the steps and given in offering. Once he was done, the Shinto priests finished the ritual, and we all went off to another area to some tea sittings sponsored by local tea groups.

I really feel privileged to have been there, not just to see Oiemoto do tea, but to see a little piece of tea in its cultural context – not just the living, everyday practice that happens right here in Philadelphia and all across the world, but being able to connect it to the other places and ways in which it’s practiced. That was an ongoing theme throughout the rest of time I was there, too.

Days of Matcha

2008-07-10T23:54:00.000-04:00

On the grounds of its headquarters in Kyoto, Urasenke has built a school where students can come and study tea full-time. Japanese-speakers have the option of taking a three-year course, which, upon graduation, confers “tea god” status. (Okay, not really. But it’s still a pretty impressive accomplishment.) For foreigners, there’s an English-language program called Midorikai, where you can study for up to one year. When I was there, I spent a week sitting in with the Midorikai students.

First, a bit about the building itself. The first floor has a kitchen (a Western-style kitchen, that is, and it’s huge, like something you’d find in a cooking school) and a series of four or five tearooms. Each room is an eight-mat room – that’s eight tatami mats, which is about twelve feet by twelve feet square – and its own separate mizuya, or preparation/utensil storage area. The fusuma (sliding doors) between the rooms can be removed to make a huge space when they need one. The tearooms open toward the kitchen on one side, and on the other, sliding doors lead to a long, narrow moss garden.

The second floor is all Western-style classrooms – not all that different from a typical college here in the U.S. Well, okay, except for the bathrooms. The second floor also features a library of tea materials, and you’ll often find students in there studying in between classes.

The third floor is all open space covered with tatami mats. This is the “overflow” class space; you might have two, three, or even four classes operating side by side, sharing one large mizuya space.

Students wear kimonos every day, even to lectures – they have to, because once they get started, there’s no time to change. Midorikai students start the day with two hours of classes, followed by about half an hour for lunch. Afternoons are three straight hours of tea lessons. Immediately after lunch, the students go to their classroom (they rotate through the available classrooms so that they’re not always in the same spot) and start getting set up.

Setup duties are broken up among different students – one student hangs the scroll, one arranges the flowers, one makes sure there’s tea in all the containers and that sweets have been brought from the kitchen, one arranges the lit charcoal in the brazier (the night before, another student prepares the ash bed for the fire – in the summertime, it’s an exacting process that can take an hour or more). By the time the teacher arrives, everything has to be ready, and all the students are sitting in the tearoom and waiting.

The students greet the teachers simultaneously, and then immediately, whoever is making tea first asks the teacher for a lesson and then goes outside the room to finish setting up. One of the other students slides forward to act as the guest for the lesson, and the rest of the students observe. The student who’s acting as the host pauses at the door to greet the teacher and the guest, and then proceeds to go through whichever tea ceremony he or she is doing that day. There are many, many variations on tea ceremony; in Midorikai, the students all do the same temae, or tea procedure, on the same day, so they can all watch each other. The student acting as the guest eats a sweet and drinks the tea, and then they switch off, so that everybody has a chance to do tea and drink tea before the afternoon is over.

Students have class Monday through Friday, and sometimes events on weekends, too. They’re pretty much living and breathing tea ceremony for an entire year. What kind of person does this? Well, most of them had some prior experience with tea in their home country – in fact, unless you qualify for one of Urasenke’s special scholarship programs, you have to be recommended by a licensed teacher in order to go to Midorikai. Urasenke doesn’t charge them tuition – the goal of Midorikai is that the graduates go back to their home country and promote tea ceremony there by doing demonstrations and telling others about tea. Some of the students who were there when I went had been studying tea for many years, although there were also some beginners. At the end of a year of study, though, everyone leaves an expert. A year at Midorikai is the equivalent of 7-10 years of private lessons.

Next up: Some of the tea places I visited while in Kyoto…

Tales from the Back of the House

2008-07-03T21:31:00.004-04:00

Okay, I know it’s been a while since I updated the blog, but I have a good excuse – I was in Japan for two weeks in June, one of which I spent studying at Urasenke in Kyoto.

Before I get into classes themselves, let’s talk about where Urasenke comes from. Back in the day, by which I mean, of course, the Momoyama Period (1573-1603), the man who was widely acknowledged as the most skilled tea pracitioner in Japan was Sen no Rikyu. Most of the tea ceremony schools in modern Japan trace their lineage back to him in some way, either through the family line or through one of his disciples.

There are three schools that descend through the family line: Omotesenke, Urasenke, and Mushonokojisenke. You’ll notice that they all end in “senke.” “Sen” is the family name, and “ke” can be roughly translated as “residence.” So, Omotesenke means “the front of the Sen residence,” Urasenke is “the back of the Sen residence,” and Mushanokojisenke is “the Sen residence on Mushanokoji Street.”

Intellectually, I knew this before I arrived, but it was still funny to me to realize that the headquarters for Urasenke and Omotesenke – two very large and prestigious tea schools – are right next to each other. You could open a window in Urasenke, throw a rock, and hit someone from Omotesenke, although I’m sure that never happens.

The grounds of Urasenke are a study in contrast. On one side, the property borders Horikawa Street, which is a wide, busy road. The Urasenke offices, which handle the school’s business affairs, is a modern, multistory office building. Right beside it, however, are a series of family temples and shrines that look like they could have been built centuries ago (probably were).

Here’s a picture of the office building:

One of the family shrines:

And the gate that leads from a back street into the grounds:

One of the Urasenke teachers told me that it used to be that if you wanted to get to Urasenke, you had to take that back street through the Omotesenke residence – there was no direct access.

The grand master (Oiemoto) of Urasenke lives on the same grounds, right next to the office building – in fact, there’s a guard on the back street that leads into the offices because it also leads past Oiemoto’s residence. (By Japanese standards, it’s a fairly large house, but coming from the U.S. I was surprised at how modest it looked.)

Also on the Urasenke property is the school building and other related buildings, like the student cafeteria. More on the school coming up in the next post

Beginning Lessons

2008-05-24T23:08:00.001-04:00

Let’s say you’ve never studied chanoyu before, and you want to start taking lessons. Different teachers approach this in different ways. In our group, we start with what’s called warigeko.

Warigeko consists of a lot of things you thought you knew how to do already – standing up, sitting down, walking across the room, opening doors, and looking at things. When you’re practicing tea, there are a lot of little rules to observe. For example, the borders of the tatami (woven grass) mats on the floor are very important in defining space. When you walk across the room, you need to pay close attention to which foot is crossing the border – when you’re entering the room, you cross the borders with your right foot, and when you’re leaving, you cross with your left.

But that’s just part of warigeko. New students also learn how to fold the fukusa (silk wiping cloth) and how to handle utensils. The teacher takes them step-by-step through the process of doing tea ceremony, showing them new skills along the way. Sometimes it’s several weeks before a new student actually gets to the point where he or she is making tea.

You may be wondering, why are there so many different details to learn? Why not just boil water and make tea? It relates to chanoyu’s Zen roots. One thing that Zen practitioners always emphasize is focusing on the present moment – not being distracted by thoughts of something that happened in the past, or plans for the future, but being completely focused on what you’re doing right now. By incorporating all of these little details into tea, every movement becomes purposeful – you have to pay attention to every moment, every muscle in your body, because as soon as you let your attention wander, you go off track. It’s a challenge even for experienced tea practitioners.

But, as with so many things in tea, there’s a practical reason, too. All of those tiny little details add up to produce a series of elegant movements. The goal is to make tea a good experience for your guests, a pleasure to watch as well as to drink.

In chanoyu, we talk about “beginner’s mind” as something to strive for: a sense of openness, a willingness to learn, and an intense focus on all the details of the movements. It’s an important attitude to have no matter how long you’ve been doing tea, because if you’re not open to the lessons that the tearoom has to offer, you’re never going to improve. And if we can let that same mindset permeate the rest of our lives, so much the better.

Why Tea?

2008-05-06T23:06:00.000-04:00

When I tell people that I do tea ceremony, one of the questions I get most often is “How did you get into that?”

The short answer is pretty straightforward: When I was a student at La Salle University, they had undergraduate courses in tea ceremony. I took the course and really loved it, so I kept practicing.

But really, my fascination with tea started long before then. When I was in my early teens, I remember reading an article in the paper about tea ceremony. I was so fascinated by the idea of an entire ritual built around drinking tea that I clipped out the article and had it hanging on my wall for years afterward.

Was it fate that life brought me to the one place in the Philadelphia area – heck, in the state of Pennsylvania – that I could actually learn about tea ceremony? When I applied, I didn’t even know about the tea ceremony program there. To be honest, at the time, I’m not sure it would have made a difference. When I signed up for the course, I was curious more than anything else.

My earliest experience in chanoyu was unusual for a tea person – learning tea in the context of a college course where there was classroom work and essays as well as hands-on instruction. My first teacher was Brother Joseph Keenan, one of the Christian Brothers at La Salle. He started learning tea at the New York branch of the Urasenke tea school, and later spent time studying at Urasenke’s headquarters in Kyoto. He had a great sense of humor, and he was always making jokes. It made the class seem much easier, even though he was as strict as any other teacher. I remember back in my room I put together mock tea utensils with whatever I could find, and I kept practicing until I got everything right. At the end of the course, when we had our tea “finals,” I did the tray-style tea from beginning to end with only one mistake (I forgot to turn around and bow at the very end). I still remember what a feeling of accomplishment that was – and how hard it seemed to get through that one temae (tea procedure). I still do that temae, but now it seems so easy!

It’s funny, but looking back, I don’t remember what it was that inspired me to ask about continuing studies after the course was over. Maybe it was a beauty of the movements, or the ritualistic aspects, or the taste of the tea. Maybe it was just a whim.

As I progressed in my studies, the tearoom became my safe zone – a space away from the stress of classes and my part-time job, where I could sit and relax and not worry about anything else for a while. I don’t think I realized until much later how much I needed that.

Demos!

2008-04-22T00:16:00.005-04:00

These past two weekends we did demonstrations at the Horticultural Center and at Shofuso as part of the Philadelphia Cherry Blossom Festival.

The busiest day of the two-week festival is Sakura Sunday, when vendors and performers all convene on the Horticultural Center underneath the cherry blossoms. There are demonstrations of dancing, singing, aikido, reiki, shiatsu, calligraphy, origami, and … hmmm … what am I forgetting?

We had a slightly different venue for our tea ceremony demonstrations this year. In the past, we did our demo in a small room off to the side. This year, we moved into one of the Horticultural Center’s indoor spaces, in the middle of one of their perennial foliage displays. The good news was that a lot more people came to watch this year, and the bad news was that the space was so noisy that the ones who came had a tough time hearing what was going on. Still, it was great to see so much interest – we literally had people packed around on all sides watching what was happening.

Here’s a photo of the audience listening to me talk about tea:

At one point I ran down to Shofuso to grab some supplies – well, okay, in kimono it’s more like a brisk hobble – and there were huge crowds outside enjoying the trees. It was a beautiful, warm day, and the cherry trees were just a little bit past their peak, but still gorgeous. There are literally dozens of cherry trees on the grounds, of all different types. Most of them are pretty young, but there are a couple of fairly old ones (I’m sorry, I don’t know how old). Here’s a photo of one:

And while I'm at it, here's a picture of Shofuso, with its weeping cherry tree in bloom. (This is where we have lessons, although you can’t see the tearoom in this photo.)

This past Saturday, there was another demonstration, this time on the veranda at Shofuso, overlooking the pond. This was a semi-private event, open only to people who reserve in advance. Taeko-sensei, one of my teachers, did a type of tea called chabako, which literally means “tea box.” The idea is that all of the utensils needed to make tea are miniaturized and packed into the box so that they can be easily transported to make tea outside. You can do it any time of year, but it’s especially popular during cherry blossom season and in the fall, when the leaves are changing colors.

We did two sittings of about twenty people each, serving tea and sweets to each person. The traditional sweets for chabako are something called konpeito, which are basically small, hard, round sugar candies. But for demonstrations we like to give people something more substantial to eat, so Taeko-sensei made sakura mochi. The innermost layer is a sweet bean paste (“an” in Japanese), surrounded by layer of steamed sweet rice dough (mochi), wrapped in a pickled cherry leaf. Delicious! But the people who were helping behind the scenes were good and let the guests have some.

After the demonstrations, a photographer from the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation took some photos of Taeko-sensei and the rest of us to use on Shofuso’s web site and in other Philadelphia marketing efforts. So if you live in the Philadelphia area, or like to read Philadelphia marketing pieces for fun, keep an eye out for photos of women in kimono – it could be one of us!

New Buds

2008-04-05T18:52:00.000-04:00

April is one of the busiest months of the year for tea people, mostly because of cherry blossoms. In Japan, when the cherry trees bloom, it’s a huge event – people take blankets and pack up food and drinks (often of the alcoholic sort) and head to the nearest patch of cherry trees to sit and admire the new flowers. Some of the more famous cherry-blossom-viewing sites get so packed you have to make reservations in advance!

Here in Philadelphia, the cherry trees aren’t quite such a big deal, although thanks to the Japan-America Society of Greater Philadelphia, you can’t help but notice the cherry trees – they’re planted in abundance along the Schuylkill River, and all over the grounds of the Horticultural Center, where the Japanese House is located. Driving in for lessons today, I noticed that most of the cherry trees are either in bloom or budding away – about a week earlier than usual, but somehow I can’t complain about having an early spring!

Today is the start of the Philadelphia Cherry Blossom Festival, although most of the big events are taking place next weekend – including the first of a series of three tea ceremony demonstrations, all within the space of a week. See what I mean about it being the busy time of year for us?

But the really exciting thing that happened today was the start of a new beginner’s tea class at the Japanese House, where we hold lessons. This was new for us. Before, we’d add new students to our group one or two at a time; they’d be taught separately, and sit in and observe lessons with the senior students. But over the years, we’ve found that students have more fun (and tend to stick with tea longer) when they’re learning with a group of other beginners. So when we moved to the Japanese House, we started planning a course specifically for beginners – twelve weeks of instruction that takes newcomers through the first tea ceremony (temae) in the Urasenke curriculum.

We had seven students start today for our first course. They’re a really great group – six women and one man (pretty typical gender ratio for tea ceremony), all with different goals. Some came because they were interested in Japanese culture, some because they were interested in the tea itself, and a couple because they were interested in the calming, meditative aspects of tea.

But you couldn’t ask for a more beautiful place to learn tea – it was a warm day, and we were in the big (15-tatami-mat) room overlooking Shofuso’s koi pond – or, for a teacher, a better group of students to start with. I think it must be a sign of great things to come.

About This Blog

2008-03-14T22:23:00.000-04:00

The impetus for this blog was one of the most traumatic things that can happen to a tea ceremony practitioner: The sudden destruction of the tearoom where I’d been practicing for the past thirteen years.

On the surface, a tearoom is a small, nondescript space. There are tatami mats on the floor (the mats covered in woven grass that the Japanese traditionally use for flooring), the walls are painted in a subdued color, the ceiling covered with wood tiles, the windows covered with paper shoji screens. There’s an alcove in the corner where we hang a scroll and set out a simple flower arrangement. When it’s time for tea, there’s an iron brazier on the floor (or, in the wintertime, set into a sunken hearth).

But, like many places in our lives, a tearoom is more than the sum of its parts. What happens there, the kinds of feelings that a tea ceremony can evoke – that’s harder to explain. The goal of this blog is not just to tell you about tea ceremony, but to talk about what it’s like to be a tea person (chajin in Japanese). Hopefully, by reading this you’ll get an idea of what it’s like, and maybe even be inspired to seek out tea ceremony for yourself.

I’m your host, Morgan Beard, but I’m only one of a group of tea teachers and students in this area. I hope that I’ll be able to rope some of my fellow tea people into posting on this blog, too, so that you can hear their stories as well as mine. In the meantime, read and enjoy!