The Book of Tea
112
The Book of Tea
112eBook
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Overview
Combining the rich aesthetic of Asian culture through the history, philosophy, and practice of tea, The Book of Tea has been enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of readers since it was first published in 1906.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780834823457 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Shambhala |
| Publication date: | 07/31/2001 |
| Sold by: | Penguin Random House Publisher Services |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 112 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Introduction
In one of the most often quoted passages in Japanese literature, the poet Basho wrote at the beginning of his
Knapsack
Notebook
:
Saigyo
in poetry, Sogi in linked verse, Sesshu in painting, Rikyu in the tea ceremony—the spirit that moves them is one spirit. Achieving artistic excellence, each holds one attribute in common: each remains attuned to nature throughout the four seasons. Whatever is seen by such a heart and mind is a flower, whatever is dreamed is a moon. Only a barbarian mind could fail to see the flower; only an animal mind could fail to dream a moon. The first task for each artist is to overcome the barbarian or animal heart and mind, to become one with nature.
At first glance it may seem peculiar to the Western mind that one of Japan's greatest poets would equate the simple tea ceremony with the best classical verse and painting. It's not exactly like comparing a perfect latte with an exquisite painting by Morris Graves or Van Gogh, but the comparison serves to present Zen mind at its best. One may address any art form by considering
"right mindfulness" and "right practice" essential to any art; thus, the art of making coffee and the art of painting are direct expression of mindfulness and practice. The "simplicity" of the tea ceremony is as complex as the richest painting or poem, and like painting and poetry, the ceremony draws upon centuries of tradition in order to arrive at what is fully present. Nearly a hundred years ago, Okakura Kakuzo wrote:
Those of us who know not the secret of properly regulating our own existence on this tumultuous sea of foolish troubles which we call life are constantly in a state of misery while vainly trying to appear happy and contented. We stagger in the attempt to keep our moral equilibrium, and see forererunners of the tempest in every cloud that floats on the horizon. Yet there is a joy and beauty in the roll of the billows as they sweep outward toward eternity. Why not enter into their spirit, or like Liehtse, ride upon the hurricane itself? He only who has lived with the beautiful can die beautifully.
To
"die beautifully" is to makes one's life a part of a greater work of art.
"Beauty and ugliness have origins," Lao Tzu warns, and they are less a matter of received opinion than a consequence of acting upon whatever is already within each of us. While Western materialist culture declares that certain paintings are worth millions of dollars, Zen reminds us that the masterpiece is temporal, and that Hui Neng (638–713), the sixth patriarch of Zen,
expressed his enlightenment by burning an image of the Awakened One. Zen mind rings with quiet laughter. "Have a cup of tea!" Or, "Paint the sound of the wind in the pines!"
Speaking of art appreciation, Okakura writes, "Our mind is the canvas on which the artists lay their colour; their pigments are our emotions; their chiaroscuro the light of joy, the shadow of sadness. The masterpiece is of ourselves, as we are of the masterpiece. The sympathetic communion of minds necessary for art appreciation must be based on mutual concession. The spectator must cultivate the proper attitude for receiving the message, as the artist must know to impart it." The artist, the painting, and its audience are not three things,
but one.
The founder of the Shingon Buddhist sect and one of the earliest importers of
Chinese tea seeds, Kukai (774–835), taught that Buddhism contained all of the essential elements of both Taoism and Confucianism, and he made the tea ceremony an expression of nature in an evanescent existence. Yet despite his interest, the tea ceremony remained an obscure Buddhist practice for several hundred more years. Kukai was a renowned artist, calligrapher, and Sanskrit scholar, whose view of Buddhism was simultaneously scholarly and religious. He insisted upon learning directly from the Sanskrit in order achieve the "true word" (shingon), containing absolute truth. Other forms of Buddhism, he believed, treated only "illnesses of the mind." For Kukai, tea was probably considered a healthful and good ceremonial drink, but his religious practice was rooted in study, not in simple ceremony.
Zen,
born in the interaction of Buddhism with Taoism in sixth century China, was said to be "transmission outside scripture—no dependence upon written words; pointing directly within, seeing one's own nature, attaining
Buddhahood." The practice of sitting meditation eliminates dualistic thinking such as subject/object or true/false. Hui Neng insisted upon "silent,
solitary self-illumination," and advocated
shikantaza,
or "sitting" as the key. Zen, then, remains much more a school of philosophy than a conventional religion. And that certainly has been a part of its appeal in the West: one may practice Zen while remaining a devout Jew,
Catholic, or atheist. There is no religious conflict because the practice of
Zen does not address whether or not there is a god, nor does it pass judgment on religious texts. Zen mind is "ordinary everyday mind," and the tea ceremony is, like the garden or planting rice or working at a desk, refined but commonplace, a ritual performed not as an emblem, but as useful in and of itself. Bringing Zen mind to the task at hand, every detail of every task becomes simple and luminous. The tea ceremony becomes art, a ceremony performed not as a symbol or allegory, but as the ultimate expression of the here-and-now in which Zen practice is rooted. In many ways, tea mind resembles
Basho's advice to poets, "Learn all the rules, then forget them." He doesn't mean to throw out the rules of composition; rather, he means to learn the tradition so thoroughly that one becomes at one with tradition. For Basho,
haiku mind, tea mind, and painting mind are all merely aspects of Zen practice—the consciousness of the artist opened through years of sitting daily.
In the twelfth century, the Zen monk Eisai, founder of the Rinzai Zen sect (named after Lin Chi, d. 866), returned from studying Buddhism in China and planted tea seeds on the temple grounds. He wrote Japan's first tea book,
Kissa yoji-ki
(Drinking Tea for Health), and became the man most often credited with beginning the tea industry. Although Eisai did much to promote tea, once again the tea ceremony apparently did not take hold except in early Rinzai monasteries. Today, we know that many of Eisai's claims for the healthfulness of green tea have proven true. Modern research suggests it helps prevent cancer, lowers cholesterol and blood sugar levels, and helps to control high blood pressure.
Still,
it wasn't until Zen master Rikyu codified the tea ceremony in the fourteenth century that it became inextricably bound to Zen. The tea ceremony has remained relatively unchanged over the last 500 years. Simplicity is the rule:
simple tools, simple surroundings, no noise, no unnecessary chit-chat, no clutter. Each motion requires a clear, attentive mind. The tea room or tea house avoids any note of ostentation. It is made of common materials. The tools, the table, the teapot, and the ornament—all must be humble and harmonious. The whisk is simple bamboo, the pot iron. Each part of tea practice is like the mind of the art aficionado, becoming a small part of the greater whole. A flower, twig or scroll reflects the season and an ink painting may contain haiku, but there is no religious tract, no philosophy.
Each gesture, like all the materials involved, is reduced to the essential.
Okakura
Kakuzo was born into a merchant family in Yokohama in 1862, and he began studying English in his infancy. While studying economics and law at Tokyo
Imperial University in 1877, he came under the influence of Ernest Fenollosa, a
Boston professor who had gone to Japan to teach political economics only to become an impassioned student of Japanese and Chinese art. The young Okakura worked diligently with Fenollosa and a small group of fellow enthusiasts to preserve Japanese art during a frenzy of Westernization in which treasures such as the art of Hokusai and Hiroshige were destroyed. Fenollosa's notes on classical Chinese poetry, made in Tokyo with the assistance of two Japanese professors, Mori and Ariga, became the source for Ezra Pound's translations,
Cathay,
one of the most important volumes of poetry in the last century. Fenollosa and
Okakura immersed themselves in classical Asian poetry and art, each teaching the other.
In
1902, on a trip to India and China, Okakura met and exchanged ideas with the
Nobel poet Rabindranath Tagore, who reinforced Okakura's notions of Asian philosophy being the perfect counterpoint to Western materialism. Their conversations resulted in Okakura's first publication in English,
The
Ideals of the East
(1904), shortly before he completed
The
Book of Tea
in
Boston, where he became Curator of the Department of Chinese and Japanese Art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. He spent the last years of his life traveling extensively, especially in Asia, collecting and cataloguing art until his death at Akakura Hot Springs in the Japan Alps in 1913.
Okakura
Kakuzo possessed an expansive imagination and a notably eccentric manner, as well as a passion for art and learning. A century—or very nearly so—after the writing of the first Asian tea manual in America, we would do well to keep in mind the historical perspective of some of his comments. His apology for
Japanese nationalism, for instance, was written at a time when Japan and Russia were quarreling and two decades before Hirohito's ascension to the throne.
"The tea room," Okakura observed, "was an oasis in the dreary waste of existence where weary travelers could meet to drink from the common spring of art-appreciation." Behind the tea ceremony, he saw the long traditions of
Confucianism, Taoism, and Zen blossoming as one, including even "the ethereal aroma of Sakyamuni himself." And why was such import placed within the arena of such a brief, simple drama? "Those who cannot feel the littleness of great things in themselves," Okakura writes in an almost exact quotation from
Confucius, "are apt to overlook the greatness of little things in others."
The
Book of Tea
is a classic. Nearly a hundred years after it was written, it remains the one
English language masterpiece on the subject. While the author's substantial contribution to the salvation and appreciation of Asian art is largely forgotten in the West, his little book on the history and culture of tea has been read by generation after generation. But it would be foolish to think of his book as only a treatise on tea. It has and will continue to be a classic in part because of its author's insights into Confucianism, Taoism, and Zen. In
Japan Okakura is still revered, known not by his family name, but simply as
Tenshin, "Heaven Heart/Mind."
Sam
Hamill
Kage-an,
2000
Table of Contents
I The Cup of Humanity 14
Tea ennobled into Teaism, a religion of aestheticism, the adoration of the beautiful among everyday facts-Teaism developed among both nobles and peasants-The mutual misunderstanding of the New World and the Old-The Worship of Tea in the West-Early records of Tea in European writing-The Taoists' version of the combat between Spirit and Matter-The modern struggle for wealth and power
II The Schools of Tea 46
The three stages of the evolution of Tea-The Boiled Tea, the Whipped Tea, and the Steeped Tea, representative of the Tang, the Sung, and the Ming dynasties of China-Luwuh, the first apostle of Tea-The Tea-ideals of the three dynasties-To the latter-day Chinese Tea is a delicious beverage, but not an ideal-In Japan Tea is a religion of the art of life
III Taoism and Zennism 86
The connection of Zennism with Tea-Taoism, and its successor Zennism, represent the individualistic trend of the Southern Chinese mind-Taoism accepts the mundane and tries to find beauty in our world of woe and worry-Zennism emphasises the teachings of Taoism-Through consecrated meditation may be attained supreme self-realisation-Zennism, like Taoism, is the worship of Relativity-Ideal of Teaism a result of the Zen conception of greatness in the smallest incidents of life-Taoism furnished the basis for aesthetic ideals, Zennism made them practical
IV The Tea-Room 128
The tea-room does not pretend to be other than a mere cottage-The simplicity and purism of the tea-room-Symbolism in the construction of the tea-room-The system of its decoration-A sanctuary from the vexations of the outer world
V Art Appreciation 178
Sympathetic communion of minds necessary for art appreciation-The secret understanding between the master and ourselves-The value of suggestion-Art is of value only to the extent that it speaks to us-No real feeling in much of the apparent enthusiasm to-day- Confusion of art with archaeology-We are destroying art in destroying the beautiful in life
VI Flowers 208
Flowers our constant friends-The Master of Flowers-The waste of Flowers among Western communities-The art of floriculture in the East-The Tea-Masters and the Cult of Flowers-The Art of Flower Arrangement- The adoration of the Flower for its own sake-The Flower-Masters-Two main branches of the schools of Flower Arrangement, the Formalistic and the Naturalesque
VII Tea-Masters 240
Real appreciation of art only possible to those who make of it a living influence-Contributions of the Tea-Masters to art-Their influence on the conduct of life-The Last Tea of Rikiu
Interviews
"It (Teaism) insulates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism of the social order. It is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life."