Tea Meetings

In a room lined with straw mats and enshrined with a tokonoma, a wall niche in which hung a calligraphed scroll and a branch of flowering cherry, Donna served tea under the watchful eye of her teacher, Christy Bartlett. Donna entered the room through a low doorway, carefully placing the tea utensils before her. She was dressed in kimono, as was Christy. Among the guests, I bent my legs beneath me, though I could not sit on my heels as they did. 

As every movement was ritualized, a feeling of suspense hung over the room. How would we fumbling humans manage? As we watched Donna fold her napkin and carefully clean the bowls, Christy dispelled strangeness by speaking calmly, directing our attention to the tokonoma. “The spring holiday,” she said, “reminds us to appreciate the beauty of the world, but also its evanescence. The blossoms will last only for this tea meeting. The scroll (a bold black and white wash of Japanese characters) was done by one our students in Japan. ‘Try to plant, as for a child, a little wild cherry tree.’ It’s a haiku by Basho.”

Donna inserted a bamboo dipper into the steaming water jar beside her and half-filled a ceramic bowl. From a tea caddy, she took a tiny amount of powdered green tea and put it in the bowl. With a tea whisk, she stirred the mixture vigorously and placed the foaming bowl beside me on the mat. Directed by Christy, I raised the bowl to my lips, using both hands. The green liquid was bitter, but not unpleasant. As Christy’s voice soothed us, the process was repeated for each guest. “Don’t worry,” she said in her smiling, musical voice. “The guest cannot do wrong.”

“Sen Rikyu, from whose lineage all our Urasenke tea masters come, wanted to get away from the ornate gilt Chinese rituals, back to simple wabi-infused utensils. He wanted to make the tea room a place where everyone was equal.” She turned back to the tokonoma. “I felt lucky to find cherry blossoms today, but it would have been better if the poem didn’t also mention cherry trees.” I recognized the subtle aesthetic which every aspect of the tea room embodied.

Some of the guests relaxed and chatted, but Christy skillfully directed us. “At tea meetings, our attention is directed to the tea utensils, the tokonoma and the intent of the meeting,” she said. “Random conversation is not welcome.” After the ceremony, the tea bowls, whisk and dippers were passed around and Christy and Donna described who had made each one, its style and age. Christy had been sent with one other person to establish the San Francisco Urasenke Foundation school in 1982. The room we were in had been built to specifications in an apartment on Larkin Street.

Seduced by the ritual, I felt lucky to be a guest at one of Donna’s tea ceremony practices. I was also fascinated at what the ritual did to each of the guests. Because we could not exhibit our personalities, it seemed that we could see each other better, that what emerged from each of us was our essence, undiluted by extraneous detail. We could see each other in all of our rich, physical presence. And it was both, as we were told, the first tea meeting and the last tea meeting. Nothing exactly like it would ever happen again.

I was steeped in a wabi-sabi aesthetic, which I had absorbed almost from my arrival on the West coast at 22, and my reading of The Book of Tea [1906] by Okakura Kakuzo. I was introduced to Sen no Rikyu in this book. It seemed a miracle that the tea ceremony should be taught near my home. Wabi-sabi referred to an appreciation of objects which reflect the imperfect, incomplete and impermanent aspects of nature. Authenticity, simplicity and humbleness were its hallmarks.

The distinction between our external personalities, with which we present ourselves to the world, and our inner essence, which rises from us spontaneously for those who have eyes to see it, has been remarked on by many. I found it in Gurdjieff’s writings. We are born with an essence, natural talents and predilections. We develop a personality as we grow. Both can be trained, though in our competitive culture, the need for a strong personality takes precedence. Personality doesn’t like restriction. Essence arises in disciplined practice or ritual.

I find this distinction useful in many ways. For instance, when working for a high-powered corporate architectural firm, I determined that working was a bit of a tea ceremony. In my case, as a part of the administrative staff, my essence was more useful to the company than any expression of personality. Work was a ritual, to be understood and enjoyed as such.

Though I attended several tea meetings, I did not consider studying the ceremony myself. When I did believe I had the time to study, I went home from a ceremony feeling completely wired and uncomfortable. I could do nothing until my nerves stopped jangling. I realized that the green matcha tea had a high caffeine content, and I was increasingly caffeine-averse. I retreated, ever more devoted to my tai chi practice and its disciplines.

The Japanese tea ceremony, or chanoyu, is of course a descendant of the long history and legend of tea in China. According to John Blofeld in The Chinese Art of Tea [1985], tea meetings in China do not require more than a pleasant setting, a small, relaxed company, tea, good water and tea things of a subdued beauty enjoyed in a spirit of mindfulness. But there is definitely an art of tea in China. “The spirit of tea is like the spirit of the Tao,” Blofeld says. “It flows spontaneously, roaming here and there impatient of restraint.”

Don and I enjoyed a Japanese tea ceremony at the beginning of this century in a newly-built tea house at Green Gulch Zen Center. It was led, once again, by the inimitable Christy Bartlett, now director of the Urasenke Foundation in San Francisco. A diverse group came in from the garden under dripping skies to share tea sweets and conversation. Don’s back was acting up, but he manfully tried to kneel. In her calm way, Christy directed our thoughts to the present, to the wet day on which we found ourselves smelling these winter pines, looking at this lush bamboo, and speaking with these unique people. A day never before and never again to be the same.