Way of Tea: celebrating the art of craft focusing on "now

So often we in the Western world are waiting for the big day or we're waiting for the big moment you know, we win the lottery or it's Christmas or it's our birthday, whatever and we really pass through so many moments not appreciating them. And so the tea room is ready for you. Okay One of the intentions of the way of tea is to focus on the everyday. So the guests will enter the room and the first thing that they will do is to pause and to look at what the host has brought into the tea room for them. There is usually a scroll and flowers. The flowers for tea always are wildflowers. An ideal flower for tea is one that blooms during the gathering and then visibly begins to fade before the gathering is over. So reminding us that these moments will never come. The way of tea as well as the practice of Zen The two are distinct although related. They share this idea that it is in the everyday moments of life that the greatest beauty and the greatest knowledge can be found. I would like to make you a bowl of tea. So the way of tea is a form with the benefit of learning to see the beauty, learning to pay attention to everyday moments in your life and to feel just enormous gratitude for example the sound of water boiling. The way of tea is a cultural tradition and a cultural practice that began in China over a thousand years ago. There are in fact over 800 different ways that one can prepare a bowl of tea. But there is this form, this constant form and by enacting this form again and again and again over one's lifetime you have this constant against which you can see your own changes and your own mentality and your own reaction. That's a very important part of the way of tea is coming to know and to know yourself as well as to know others. Jessica, thank you so much for having me over for tea today. I've really been looking forward to it and when I walked into the tea room and took saw the scroll that you've selected for today. I really felt that the calligraphy was just so graceful. Thank you and I'm so glad that you enjoyed it. The scroll today reads in Japanese buji kore kimi or in English this could be translated as to be without attachment is noble. Well, I guess to be without attachment can be very difficult. I think there is a sense in which we hope to to be without attachment to phenomena, even to our our conceptions of ourself, the things that we think must be one way. Thank you. So, please have this way. The way of tea is a different kind of knowledge. First of all, I'd like to say it's not a ritual. Absolutely not a ritual. It is a form and in the West we tend to call anything that has a regular form a ritual. But with certain exceptions and I think that the strongest analogy that we can draw to the practice of tea is music. A person learning to play the piano or any instrument really, they begin with scales. And I think they never stop doing the scales and so tea is very much like that. There are a number of reasons why form is followed and why there is a form. If, for example, a person were to make up what they did every time they make tea, that would require all their attention. Oh, what am I going to do now? Huh? What should I do next? What, you know, and so your mind is taken up with really some fairly unimportant things. However, by having the form, not only are you able to be extremely focused without having to make these unimportant decisions about what to do next, but still being extremely focused on each moment. And in fact, the form is the way that you can focus your attention. Again, if you were just making it up, your mind would be scattered each time you made it. But by having this form, there's this intense focus of attention. When tea is being made, every object that is used to prepare the tea for the guests is a work of art. Again, a difference with Western culture who feel that objects that have a function cannot be art. They are craft. But in Asia, that makes them even more spectacular as works of art. That not only are they required to fulfill aesthetic functions, but they must also fulfill practical function. This tea bowl was so nice to drink out of it. I don't think I've ever drunk out of a table like that. It's so light and yet it really has a lot of texture to it. The tea bowl is black kanshitsu. It's actually a kind of lacquer. The utensils for tea also are a narrative and the host has created a narrative for the guest. The narrative will unfold throughout the course of the tea in the conversation. Actually, we don't even use the word conversation to describe what happens in the tea bowl. We really call it a dialogue in the Greek sense of dialogue being exchange of ideas that hopefully will leave all of us with a deeper understanding than we began with. All these wonderful feelings of the summertime. The sweet that you served is something else. It almost looks like ice, you know, gave off such a feeling of coldness. Each utensil is one piece of the narrative and the dialogue that will unfold in the tea room. If it's not too much trouble, I would like to take a closer look at the tea container and the tea scoop. Particularly in the West, from our schooling actually, we are kind of taught that we learn things in 14-week segments and then move on to the next thing. Tea isn't like that. With any true study, you're not done in a day. You're not done in a semester. You're not done in a year. Any true study is a lifetime of study and the way of tea is the same. The narrative that we were creating through our choice of utensils today were intended to speak to finding the simplicity in life. Bujji, to be without attachment. It doesn't mean to be detached. Almost the opposite of being detached. It means being very involved and in fact committing yourself to something, but not being judgmental, not being attached to the outcome. There is a saying in tea, Ichigo Ichie, and that means we have this one moment for this single meeting. Thank you so much for allowing me a close look at the utensils. The tea container is absolutely beautiful. The design is called Un-Kin or clouds and brocade and it refers to the clouds of cherry blossoms in the spring and the brocade of autumn leaves in the fall. Yes, beautiful. So again, the feeling of seasons. The attitude of all those who gather in the tea room for this gathering is that we can't count on seeing each other again. This is the moment we have, this one moment, and it will never come again. It's unique. And the tea scoop, does it have a poetic name? The name in Japanese is Kanno, which in English is something like an upwelling of gratitude. We don't wear watches in the tea room. One o'clock comes twice a day and we have that expectation, one o'clock will come tomorrow. But this moment will never come again, ever. This is it. Well, thank you. Everything was just wonderful today. I enjoyed it so much. Thank you so much. Thank you for coming. And we have to live in that moment and we have to realize to the best of our ability, rise to the best of ourselves in that moment. Thank you very much.