Early November update – A midorikai interlude

After a long and drawn out election cycle, America has a new president. I am not going to comment on the results of that election in these emails. I can just offer to the universe that I, myself, can only continue to try to be better at helping others, to be compassionate, to love more, to seek to educate myself on what I don’t know, to be kinder to myself, to see the beauty in the unseen, to spend time doing what matters, to fear less, and to try to make the world a better place than what I found. 

As someone mentioned to me the other day, sometimes these emails I’m sending make it difficult to understand what I’m talking about. I can only say, please ask me if you are confused or curious about something I’ve written. However, I am by no means an expert on anything I’m talking about. Just know that I’m enthusiastic and excited about many of the new things I’m continuing to encounter here. Except mizuya toban week: I’m having a VERY difficult time finding something to be enthusiastic about during that tiring week. I do however understand that sometimes I sound like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole. 

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Autumn colors nature walk

In Kyoto

The autumn colors are here! There have been many toban duties, preparations for Christmas chakai, many school events and field trips to keep all the students busy. For Christmas chakai, we have finished the invitations and are beginning to create the omiyage (or presents) for the guests who will attend. We have to make a little less than 200 items. Midorikai gives an annual thank you chakai for the Sen family, all of the Urasenke employees, teachers and fellow students who have hosted, sponsored and helped us this entire year. It’s our way of telling the entire Urasenke institution, thank you! I am not going to ruin it by saying what the gifts are yet, but I can tell you that there has been a lot of folding and dying of paper happening. We have also been working on the sweets we will serve and have a really great idea. The office liked what we brought but we are just refining the recipe at this point. We’ve made a list of the dogu that we have and are trying to fill in the gaps. And we are planning how to decorate the rooms we will be using. For fun in my spare time, I’m trying to squeeze in some autumn color sight-seeing (momiji). I went on a boat ride from Kameoka to Arashiyama (called the Honazano Boat Ride). It was wonderful because the leaves were just beginning to turn crimson. 

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Honazano boat ride

 We have been starting to learn chabako temae, which are procedures where you transport everything in a small square box. It’s great for when you don’t have a tea room around but you still want to make tea. People either love these procedures or hate them because there are a lot of utensils and it gives some people a feeling of that you are being too finicky. It’s difficult to feel the calm, “no mind” or zen quality of doing temae when you are thinking about all the different parts and wher they go and what hand to pick it up or put it down with. Though, this can be said for most any temae. To me, chabako sort of feels like playing with a doll house, even though the utensils aren’t necessarily miniature. We are continuing all of our lectures on architecture, art history, japanese history, chado history, Eastern Religion, japanese waka poetry, cooking, seasonality, tea utensils, and much more. There is always something interesting to learn and it continues to fill me with wonder and delight for how deep we are going in to Japanese cultural arts and history. Curiosity is a wonderful thing, though the deeper I dive, the more I realize I don’t know. Chado truly encompasses many Japanese traditional arts. 

We created two tea bowls this month. The first one we made with our hands. We started with a 1 kg ball of clay. We pushed a hole in it with our thumb and started molding the rough shape on a hand-wheel. Then we let it dry for a little while and began shaving/carving off the excess clay to make the bowl. The bowl should weight only 400g, so there was a lot of carving to be done. Sometimes you got dangerously close to cutting a hole in the bottom and our sensei had to rush over and save us before we wrecked it. Luckily, we had some close shaves but no one destroyed their bowl. I selected the “burnt caramel” glaze for my bowl partly because I already have a very nice black raku-style tea bowl with matte glaze made by Portland-potter Richard Brandt. I also have two white chawan. So, after black or white, the next most intriguing color was this “creme-brulee topping” color. There is a lot of variety in our bowls but everyone had a wonderful time carving them, and the sensei at Katsuragama was very knowledgeable. He made it look quite easy. When we get them from the kiln, they are going to be arriving in a nice wooden box (for those who ordered one for it). I’m hoping that it is at least decent enough that I will enjoy drinking tea from it. I will post a picture of it glazed and completed after December since we hope to use all the bowls we create for the Christmas chakai.

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Tenryuji temple

The second tea bowl we received pre-fired and we had to paint a design on it. This is a kyo-yaki style tea bowl, where there is a picture painted on the outside of the bowl, and sometimes a bit spilling over in to the inside. We went to the kiln Akanegama for this activity. I painted a nice picture on mine and the sensei is going to do some highlight work in white and possibly gold. He said “leave it to me,” so we will see what I get. The painting was easier for me then hand-making the bowl.

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Ichiwan kara peacefulness

2013-04-16_11-51-12_357In the aftermath of the election of Donald Trump, let us re-dedicate ourselves to the mission of peacefulness through a bowl of tea, and the principles of harmony, respect, purity and tranquility.  These are turbulent times and people are very emotional. I don’t post about politics or my own political views, but someone recently posted a hateful, racist rant on my Facebook page.   Fortunately, I get to review anything before it gets to be seen publicly on my page, but I wanted to write something thoughtful in response to it.

Even though I am a third-generation American, I have faced discrimination and racism in my lifetime.  I have been told so many times to go back to where I came from.  People have told me that it wasn’t personal,  that it was an ignorant person, that I shouldn’t take it to heart.  But when it happens, it feels so very personal. Where would I go back to? Where do I belong if not here? So many people are experiencing this and much worse than a posted rant in the last few days.

We cannot control what others think or do.  How we feel and respond to others is the only control we truly have in our lives.  We get to choose what kind of person we aspire to be and act according to our character and values.  I could choose to be angry at this person, I could choose to be fearful and shut down.  But that is not my character.  I choose to stay open and loving.  That is not to say that I will tolerate people acting hateful. I choose to call it out and say it is not acceptable. I call on them to choose another way.

If they can, I will say please come have a bowl of tea.

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Presenting the Way of Tea

One of the things I am passionate about in my life is the way of tea. I am known for my enthusiasms, and Chado has kept me captivated for more than 30 years. There are many ways that I share my passion for Chado and one is that I talk about it all the time (just ask my husband). A way to satisfy my urge to talk about it and to share it is to give presentations.

 

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When I first started training, my sensei had me participate in demonstrations as a guest. I also had to show up, dress in kimono, help prepare the mizuya and clean up afterwards. Eventually, I got to do the temae and after a couple of years, I was doing the narration and answering questions. She like me to talk because I was so enthusiastic that people hung around afterwards and wanted to know why I found it so exciting. It was a great recruiting tool for sensei and many of the people I engaged with ended up as her students.

After I returned home from Midorikai, I kind of lost confidence that I knew what I was talking about when I did the narration for a presentation. There was just so much I didn’t know, and so much that I did know that I couldn’t boil it down for a half hour presentation. But sensei still insisted that I do presentations. And when I moved to Seattle, they had regular presentations at the Seattle Art museum. One of my sensei always did the talking, and it was inspiring and interesting when he did. Instead of just talking about what was happening in the temae, he interspersed personal stories, myths, history and aesthetics. He asked people questions and captivated the audience. Since then, I have modeled my presentation on his, but with my own personal stories, historical facts, examples and questions to the audience.karen-and-margie

Since I before I started teaching, as part of my practice, I present Chado, the way of tea at least once a month. Sometimes, like last month, it is more than 5 times. I know that many tea people do not do presentations because it takes a lot of work. From securing venues, to planning toriawase, to packing everything, hauling it to the venue, unpacking, setting up, doing the presentation, clean up, packing, unpacking again and letting everything dry and putting everything away. It is a lot of work, and for many presentations, I had to do everything all by myself.  I once set up in a large gymnasium where hardly anyone could hear me. But for me, the privilege and the opportunity to share my passion for the way of tea, and to tell people how much it means to me, satisfies me in a profound way.

Presentations don’t all go well

That is not to say that every presentation that I have done has gone smoothly. One time I forgot to bring a futaoki, or I didn’t have a fukusa. I have also forgotten where I was in the middle of the temae, or had out of body experiences. I have tripped over electrical cords and blown out the electricity in the building, and all manner of disastrous things have happened to me when I was giving a presentation. And yet I was able to observe how I handled disasters and I survived and learned things and improved things for the next time. All very good life lessons.

Now that I am a teacher, I have my students participate in presentations on Chado. Students start out like I did, being a guest, then doing the temae, mizuya cho and then doing the narration. This is good training for students, in that they have to put to use what they have learned without relying on Sensei there to direct them, or rescue them when they make a mistake. It teaches them to move forward no matter what and how to handle themselves in uncertain situations. It also teaches them to help each other out and work as a team.

The principle aim of your training is to enable you, when the time comes, to perform tea splendidly and without shame. This is the reason why those who pass through the entrance way of this place are prepared to endure severe discipline. For it is in this way that they gradually develop fine characters as people. They cannot achieve this simply by reading books and listening to others. They must experience it through their own bodies. ~ Soshitsu Sen XV, The Spirit of Tea

One of the things that we lose sight of when we are doing presentations is that we still have a guest and the most important thing is to make good tea for our guest. If you can manage to put tea in the bowl, add hot water and whisk it well, then of course, that is still a good thing.

img_1055I’d like to close with a thank you note I received from a student after a presentation:

Dear Sensei:
I just wanted to write and say thank you for your support on Saturday. It means a lot to me. My husband asked me how the night went and I told him, “Awful, horrible, a mess, and wonderful.” Your words really helped me see the wonderful part, the part where I got to fail in a safe place and to succeed in persevering and striving to make the best bowl of tea that I could make in that moment, and for that to be okay. You reminded me that perfection is not the goal we should strive for, but for making tea with our hearts. And I accept what my heart said about me in that moment. I remind myself that when I am feeling most lost, someone who cares will whisper directions. As always, thank you for being my Sensei.

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Late September update — A midorikai interlude

Karla viewing the moon

The high heat of summer is tapering off and we are starting to get cooler nights. It’s pleasant to be outside again and ride my bike around Kyoto. If you look up in the sky on a clear night during the middle of September, you could see the rabbit in the moon pounding away on his mortar making mochi. Unlike “the man in the moon,” the Japanese see a hard-working rabbit. If you google “rabbit in the moon,” you can find some amazingly cute illustrations of this folktale along with some overlays of the moon to help you see this for yourselves.

On the day of the full-moon, we had a tea offering in Nara at Toshodaiji temple. This was our first field trip that we have done at night, and so we departed school at around 3 pm to make sure that we would catch the trains and be at the right place at the right time. It was an unusual tea offering in the sense that it was open to the general public and many people were talking during the procedure. The nephew of O’Iemoto-sama did the tea offering and he did a nice job. By the time he finished, it was dark and the moon kept winking in and out between the clouds while we enjoyed our matcha and mochi sweet. Thank you hardworking Moon Bunny! You can see me admiring the moon in my kimono in the picture attached 🙂

The second and third year gakuen students invited us to attend their moon viewing chakai. It was well thought out and they really worked hard with serving so many people and being such gracious and thoughtful hosts. Unfortunately, this was the first time a sensei was unable to attend, so I missed a lot of the helpful explanations that follow because of my inability to understand most of what’s going on in Japanese.

The kohai are continuing to settle in and we are finding ways to balance our time together in this new group. I am busily preparing things for my keiko chakai, which will be on Oct 22. I’m selecting the tea utensils around my theme, practicing to make the sweets, and practicing the procedures I will need to have mastered to hopefully make a smoothly-run gathering. I say “hopefully” because undoubtably something will go unexpectedly (I don’t want to say “wrongly” because there is no “wrong”) and I just will need to practice self-care along with practicing everything else. In the mean time, I have a volleyball tournament to play in, a few tea events to attend and help at, and just “normal” seasonality here in Kyoto. The leaves on the trees are starting to look a little withered, so the autumn color may just be around the corner. I expect my ability to write every two weeks is going to wain for a bit, but just know that I’m busy and happy. Maybe I’m happy because I’m busy? In either case, time is flying by and it feels like just yesterday I arrived in Kyoto even though September marked the half-way point. I should say it WOULD feel like it was just yesterday however I’ve gained so much information that my brain tells me it’s been much longer. No one could have possibly learned as much as they teach us here in just a few days! That would be impossible. I’m also learning so much about myself too. It’s truly a miraculous opportunity I’ve been given.

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Flying geese signal Autumn has come

single-cry-of-gooseThis is the scroll hanging in the tokonoma today. It is written by the priest Fujii Kaido (1898-1984) of Daitokuji Sangen in.  It reads shuku-issei

Shu ku issei no kari – Autumn sky, a single cry of the wild goose

Suddenly it is no longer summer in the Pacific Northwest.  We have been hearing the geese migrating South for  the winter. Small groups of geese in their distinctive V formation fly over head.  Since we live near a large open field and wetlands, flocks of geese stop to rest near our house and we can hear them honking as they fly close over the house.

I did some research about the geese and why they travel in V formation:

Geese fly in a V formation because it conserves their energy. Each bird flies slightly above the bird in front of him, resulting in a reduction of wind resistance. The birds take turns being in the front, falling back when they get tired. In this way, the geese can fly for a long time before they must stop for rest.

When geese fly together, each goose provides additional lift and reduces air resistance for the goose flying behind it. Consequently, by flying together in a v-formation, scientists estimate that the whole flock can fly about 70% farther with the same amount of energy than if each goose flew alone. Geese have discovered that they can reach their destination more quickly and with less energy expended when they fly together in formation.

When a goose drops out of the v-formation it quickly discovers that it requires a great deal more effort and energy to fly. Consequently, that goose will quickly return to the formation to take advantage of the lifting power that comes from flying together.

Geese rotate leadership. When the goose flying in the front of the formation has to expend the most energy because it is the first to break up the flow of air that provides the additional lift for all of the geese who follow behind the leader. Consequently, when the lead goose gets tired, it drops out of the front position and moves to the rear of the formation, where the resistance is lightest, and another goose moves to the leadership position. This rotation of position happens many times in the course of the long journey to warmer climates.

Geese honk at each other. They also frequently make loud honking sounds as they fly together. Scientists speculate that this honking is their way of communicating with each other during their long flight.

Geese help each other. Scientists also discovered that when one goose becomes ill, is shot or injured, and drops out of the formation, two other geese will fall out of formation and remain with the weakened goose. They will stay with and protect the injured goose from predators until it is able to fly again or dies.

One late night a few years ago, my husband was taking out the garbage.  It was a dark foggy night in Autumn.  As he was standing in the driveway, he heard a single goose honking, as if he was trying to find his way in the fog at night. It was a plaintive, lonely sound.   A single “honk,”  Where are you guys?  a few seconds later “honk,”  I am here, “honk,” I am alone.  He stood listening to that lone goose who had lost his companions in the night, and was moved by that forlorn, melancholy sound in the Autumn sky, a single cry of the wild goose.

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