Silence and stillness

I just came back from Tea and Zen Tea Camp at Tahoma One Drop Zendo.  I have never formally studied Zen, though over the years I have sat zazen for tea.  At Midorikai there was a temple at Daitokuji whose abbot let us sit in his Zendo before class, but I was a fair weather sitter.  I wouldn’t get out of bed early if it was raining, cold, or too hot.  Other tea classes began with zazen that I have attended, and I have sometimes started my classes with Zazen to calm the students who had just driven in traffic to get to class.

Zazen at the Tea Camp started at 4:50 am.  It was dark and I needed a flashlight to get to the Zendo.  I am not known as an early riser, so I appreciated that nobody talked with me as we assembled and settled in for early morning Zazen.

After the chanting started and the bell rang, the room was silent. That is, with 15 people in the room, there was no talking.  I am always taken how intimate the silence is in Zendo.  Though I could not see everyone, I could feel the energy.  I could hear outside noises such as cars passing, and birds waking up,  but they didn’t disturb the Zendo.

Normally I sit Zazen in seiza because I can sit longer in that position than half lotus, but for this seminar,  I have been working on opening my hips.  Sitting in this position was challenging, but not as hard as I anticipated.

As usual, when the silence and stillness of the Zendo settled down, my mind went on a wandering journey in order to stimulate itself from the deprivation of input.  Like a puppy, I kept trying to bring myself back by counting my breaths.  Pretty soon, my left foot became numb, and it started to creep up my leg.  The urge to move to find relief became consuming.  Breathing, counting, breathing, counting . . .

I appreciated the talks that Gensho, our leader, had later about the physicality of sitting.  The position of your spine, how to use your core to maintain your posture and even some exercises to help sitting for longer periods.  The most important thing he said is to notice and listen to your own body.  Our body speaks to us if we just pay attention.

In the stillness and silence of the Zendo, I could start to listen to my body.  The usual distractions were minimized.  What did that twinge mean?  Could I find a position where it took longer for the numbness in my foot to start? What was going on with the base of my spine? At what point did my breathing deepen?  Sometimes, I was just breathing and forgot to count.

During walking meditation in the crisp air of the now lightening day, I was at first relieved that I could walk off the numbness in my foot, but I began to match my breath to my steps, and notice how my feet connected to the ground.  I walk regularly during the week, but seldom do I notice these things.

Starting the day with Zazen had lingering effects for me as I was more quiet and thoughtful throughout breakfast and chores.  I was paying attention less to my own thoughts and more to what I was doing and people around me.

In the chakai in the afternoon, I noticed and appreciated things that I probably would have passed by without thinking.  Sounds that I normally take for granted such as the sound of the whisk swishing, the water going into the kensui gave me great pleasure, as did the sound of the lid of the kettle on the futaoki.   Do you notice these things during temae? Even the natsume and chashaku, I examined with greater attention to detail than the usual cursory look.  Some of the guests had never attended a chakai before and I tried to pay attention as if it was my first time too.  I appreciated that the host didn’t chatter, but let us listen, observe, and experience the chakai as it unfolded.  The tea was so delicious!

Even if you don’t sit Zazen, spending some time in silence and stillness allows you to listen and notice things that get lost in the day to day rush of what we do.  Have your tea in the garden in the morning, go for a walk without talking.  turn off your phone for half an hour.  And listen, listen, listen . . .

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It is not a performance

Some people, especially at demonstrations, get the idea that Chanoyu is a performance. The host has set the stage and enters to perform a ritual with the guests as the audience.  In performance the emphasis and attention are all directed at the performer, while the audience is there to be entertained or to view the performer do their thing.

I always emphasize to people that Chanoyu is not just a performance, but a shared created experience.  It requires the full participation of the guests.  Even though hosts and guests each have roles to play, a successful tea gathering works when everyone embraces their roles and contributes to the whole experience.

Yes, the host has set the stage for the Chanoyu experience.  They have chosen the time, place, utensils, and guests.  The form of the activity is set, but the actual experience is not.  There are so many things that go into a tea gathering that no two of them are alike.  Even if the same place, utensils and guests gather again, the experience is different.  “Ichigo ichie,” One gathering in a lifetime, or unprecedented, unrepeatable.

We are generally not taught how to be a good guest at a gathering, but the etiquette of the guest taught in tea applies to life in general. Things like responding to an invitation promptly, bringing a gift to the gathering to thank the host for their efforts, and writing a heartfelt thank you note afterward were what I was taught from a young age.

But while at the gathering, common sense things such as not bringing up controversial subjects for discussion, respecting everyone, and trying to get along are also good manners.

What Chado has taught me is that being a good guest is an active role.  The role of the guest is to receive and to appreciate.  That it is an active role, not a passive one.  A good guest will notice the things that the host has thoughtfully provided to enhance the guests’ enjoyment.  They will notice even the small things such as individual hand towels for guests to wipe their hands, or fresh flowers in the bathroom.

Another active thing guests can do is come to the gathering with an attitude of gratitude. It is a privilege to be invited to a tea gathering and the host has put in a tremendous amount of work for the guests.  With gratitude, guests are more open to receive and absorb the experience.

We are not taught very much how to receive.  There are many lessons about giving, but receiving is often considered to be selfish, and therefore undesirable and undeserved. A guest with gratitude can receive whatever is offered wholeheartedly and gracefully.  As my mother said, “You know the good feeling that you get when you are giving, so why would you deny someone else the good feeling by refusing or downplaying what you receive?”

By giving yourself to the shared created experience of a tea gathering, a whole world opens to us.  A connection with other people can be deep and lasting.   Communication between host and guests, between guests and guests deepens without words being said.  Magical and transformative things can happen. You can contribute to those magical and transformative things.  You can become magical and transformative yourself.

Life is richer and fuller if you participate fully.  Sitting on the sidelines or waiting to be entertained takes away from the enjoyment of being in the moment and being involved in something larger than our own wants and needs.

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Studying tea builds resilience

In serious study or training in anything you will have setbacks. What you dot with setbacks determines how resilient you are.  When things start out hard and get harder, what motivates you to hang in there and continue to practice?

What is resilience?

Resilience is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands. In other words, how well do you continue after something gets hard? Do you have the flexibility to adjust your approach, mental attitude, and behavior to your internal self-talk, and external circumstances?

Motivation, determination, and commitment

As an example of resilience, one of the superpowers of my husband that I admire very much is his tenacity. When solving a problem, he doesn’t give up. He will wrestle with a problem and keep at it until he comes to a solution. It doesn’t matter if it is a hard Sudoku puzzle or building a tearoom. When he was building the tearoom, he didn’t know how to do it, so every day was a challenge in figuring out what to do and how to do it

There were so many details and so many places he didn’t know how to proceed.  There were some days all he could think to do was to work on another aspect of the room. Then he would go back and re-think and re-do the section he had previously been working on. One section of the room, the tokonoma, he built at least three times to correct mistakes and to make it fit.  It was a lonely project. He was determined to finish it and have a tearoom I could be proud of.

I asked him once how he kept at it for more than two and a half years. He said it was one of the hardest projects he ever did. There was nobody to tell him how to do it, what the next step was, or how to go about doing it. He was on his own and had to think and try and fail and try again. Nobody could consult with him because nobody we knew had built a tearoom before. I know nothing about woodworking or building, so I was no help to him. I could only point to pictures and tell him this is what I want.

That was part of his motivation. He promised he would build a tearoom for me, and he wanted to deliver on that promise. His vision was to do as fine a job as he knew how to make it look like an authentic Japanese tearoom. I am delighted to say he exceeded all my expectations, and I am grateful every time I step into that tearoom. I cherish every little detail and all the precision work that he put into that room. As I say, it is a love letter to me in the care and effort he put into it.

Weekly study and Chado presentations

When we come to keiko every week, we practice temae, and sensei corrects us. We learn when we are not doing it correctly and strive to take heed of the corrections. It takes resilience to continue, to perfect our temae, to pay attention, to remember so many things. Why do we come, week after week to keiko? How many of us practice between lessons, sticking with it even when sensei is not there to guide us?

Chado demonstrations are their own form of training in resilience. It takes so much effort to plan, pack, load the utensils, unload, set up, do the demonstration, clean up, pack up, load, unload, clean, dry, and put everything away. Some people think it is too much. Yet the discipline and effort must be worth it. If we understand that it is training, that is to share the way of tea, that all the effort is its own reward, then it is not a burden but a privilege to present Chado to people who know nothing about it.

Measuring progress

The world’s foremost cellist, Pablo Casals, is 83. He was asked one day why he continued to practice four and five hours a day. Casals answered, “Because I think I am making progress.”

In calligraphy shodo lessons, my sensei gives me assignments and I practice them at home. The next month I present my six best efforts and he chooses one (or none, and I re-do the assignment) that he asks me to keep. Often, I have no idea why he chose that particular work to keep. Sometimes I have ideas about why he didn’t choose some and not others such as the spacing is off, the centerline veers off, splotches of ink on the paper. But other times, I look at them and don’t really know why he chose a particular work. This lack of feedback has forced me to self-assess where I am and my own progress. Though I complained once to my husband that I was frustrated and didn’t know if I was making any progress in my shodo studies. He said, “Of course you are! Your assignments are getting harder and harder.”

Being able to self-assess your own progress without external feedback builds resilience. When you don’t need sensei to tell you that you are doing a good job, or that you are getting better, then you can be in charge of your own learning. Knowing where you are in your progression will enable you to focus on where you need to work and motivate your continuous lifelong learning.

Adversity and Setbacks

Every serious endeavor has obstacles, adversity, and setbacks. It is how you learn to overcome these that builds resilience. Solving problems and overcoming obstacles gives you the confidence that you can do it again. Working through adversity or a time of no progress takes determination and tenacity. If you believe that you have what it takes to continue even though right now you suck at it, it builds on itself to achieve even a little success you can count as progress.

Why cultivate resilience

When we work through problems success seems more worthwhile. Easy things are not as valued as when we put in the effort and earn it. The sense of accomplishment feeds the self-confidence that we are competent and can do more and achieve more. We can try new things and explore areas that we could only dream of before. It can also serve as an example to others that they too can be successful. They can work through problems and obstacles, achieve more, explore, and try new things.

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Preserving the fire

Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.” 
― Gustav Mahler  

As international teachers of a traditional Japanese art, how can we “preserve the fire” of Chado and pass on the traditions, yet still allow for it to have meaning in our own culture? I have been lucky in my own training to be taught by Japanese teachers. I have had the opportunity to study in Kyoto. I have some context for the traditional training in the ways to transmit and pass on the art of Chado.  

We are teaching a traditional Japanese art, but we are not in Japan. It is not easy to re-create Japan where we are. Seasons are different, food is different, houses are different, manners are different. After thinking about this for many years, my own solution is to look at what I consider essential teaching and Chado values. I had to look to my own training, reading and discussion with other teachers to distill what I think is important and pass on what I think is the spirit of tea. 

With these tools, I have a framework for instilling in my students the traditions, yet I can be flexible in presenting the lesson. For example, when I first teach students to whisk a bowl of tea, they must pass the bowl to the person on the right. They get to drink someone else’s bowl of tea. Many students say that if they had known someone else was going to drink it, they would have done a better job of whisking. 

I think about how previous generations of tea teachers might have wrestled with these questions. Did Gengensai think about how traditionalists would view Ryurei temae? Did Tantansai think about educating his son in a Western University and how it would change the future of Urasenke? Or did Daisosho consider how Midorikai would affect the internationalization of Chado? 

Now that I have teachers in training, I have had to think even deeper about what I need to transmit to the next generation of teachers, knowing that they will take my teaching and modify it further as we know the current culture will change. How will I allow for the march of technology in teaching, how will norms in dress and manners affect how future teachers present the lessons? How much flexibility do my teachings have and how much is essential, not to be eliminated? How thoughtfully can I present lessons to the next generation so that they understand the underlying values? How much cultural context is necessary to transmit essential teachings? And how much backlash would there be from traditionalists with every innovation and variation in teaching style and modification from the traditional way of doing things? 

All these questions and many more can paralyze one into thinking that there is no good way to pass on a traditional art unless it is passed exactly the way that I was taught. That is one solution. But when I left Midorikai in Kyoto, one of the parting things Oiemoto said to us was to incorporate your own culture and teach the essence of Chado. 

Urasenke Kotoba
We are striving to learn the essence of Chado and put it into practice in our daily lives. We shall continuously reflect upon ourselves to attain this end.  As in accepting a bowl of tea, we shall always be grateful for the universal love we receive from each other. We shall strive to communicate to others the virtues of Chado — that we are living in this world by mutual consideration through and for others. 

  1.  We shall consider others first. 
  2. We are a family and Iemoto is our parent. All who enter his gate to learn Chado are brothers and sisters.  As we are one in spirit, we shall respect all we meet. 
  3. As we advance along the Way of Tea, we shall not forget the humble but eager heart of the beginner. 
  4. With a sincere and generous heart, we shall work together to cultivate ourselves and illuminate the world in which we live. 

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Studying a traditional art

What does it mean to study a traditional art?  Well, of course there are traditions.  That means things are passed down from teacher to student, generation to generation.  There is a way to do things based on many people refining and perfecting the craft. Like playing classical music, ballet or other traditional art, learning the basics takes time and practice.  Until you can understand basic vocabulary, do the basic moves, and have the discipline to train your body as well as your mind, it can be limiting and frustrating. 

Sometimes there is a tendency to shortcut the training, skip steps and move ahead before techniques are mastered.  This results in essential teaching and learning getting lost and limits to furthering ability that leads to mastery. 

Some people try to make training easier and more comfortable, but as top athletes know, an easy, comfortable workout doesn’t help you progress and get better. 

In tea, we train in temae.  Not only are we training our bodies to do the procedures in the correct order, but we are also training our minds not to wander and to be present with each step.  We are also training to make it look beautiful and effortless.  We are training our awareness of what else is going on in the room and we are training our hearts to think not only of ourselves but others, too. And of course, we are training to make a good bowl of tea for our guests. 

“If you wish to break with tradition, learn your craft well, and embrace adversity”
― Soke behzad Ahmadi  

On the other hand, study of traditional art can be bound up in doing exactly the same things over and over again for the sake of form.  Innovation gets stifled and we repeat the same things because it is what we have always done.  Meaning is lost as going through the motions without thought becomes normal. 

Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.”
― Gustav Mahler 

A tradition is kept alive only by something being added to it. 

– Henry James 

When traditions get internationalized, there is always simplification.  It is difficult to transmit cultural contexts and there are language translation difficulties.   Many times, when the cultural context is lost, there is substitution of values or meanings.   I was reading the other day about a kintsugi workshop.  One of the materials required was that participant bring a bowl or plate that would be broken so that it can be repaired.  There was to be a meditation on fixing the object as a means for fixing the broken things in the participants’ life.  With the newly repaired object, the participants could proudly display that they had healed the brokenness of their life.  

Unlike my understanding of kintsugi, it is a cherished object that is well loved that has been broken, rather than a throwaway object that we deliberately break to repair.  In traditional kintsugi, the repair is visible and highlighted by gold, not hidden so that the break becomes part of its history and essence, and the piece could continue to exist and be cherished. 

Sometimes traditional arts are adapted to the non-native culture and the context and values of the tradition are done away with as the new culture has no connection to them.  I joined a chado group online once where they were discussing how to adapt Chado to American culture.  One of the aspects of the discussion was how to make Chado more accessible to Americans by making it more comfortable.  They decided to eliminate seiza and do it cross legged at a coffee table, no need for a tea room.  Kimono was too complicated and uncomfortable, so yoga pants was designated as appropriate dress. Matcha was too bitter and contained caffeine, so it was also eliminated in favor of herbal blends that could be steeped rather than whisked, therefore eliminating the need for a chasen.  And because nobody in America bows, they did away with bowing.

There was no discussion about the deeper meanings of Chado, the spiritual development, or the hospitality of the host.  It was somehow lost in context of the comfort of the participants.   At what point then, can we say that this is still Chado?  By innovating, changing, or eliminating aspects of the form because the context, essential learning, and values have been lost or not transmitted, we can completely change the meaning of a traditional art.  

Americans are great at taking aspects of other traditions, eliminating context and substituting other values.  Yoga, martial arts, Tibetan philosophies, ancient Mayan and Native American traditions can be all smooshed together to create new ”healing arts” exemplified by the New Age movement. 

Many people think that they can learn a traditional art by viewing videos online.  While you can learn a lot about a traditional art, it is like learning to play the violin online.  Would you train in ballet by watching videos?  Traditional arts are best passed on teacher to student.  So find a teacher and train with them if you really want to learn a traditional art.

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