After returning home I started reading the book at my dining room table over my Sunday morning soy matcha latte. A few days later my husband referred me to an article on Edrid's website that spoke to an issue of contemplation that we had been discussing. While on the site I noticed a link to an e-book Edrid had written called Tataga Style Tea Ceremony, A "California" Version Of The Traditional Cha-no-yu Japanese Tea Ceremony.
These two little books have totally inspired me and I've started collecting my tea ceremony implements. I've purchased a tea bowl from a friend who sells his ceramics at our local Saturday Farmer's Market. I found a bamboo whisk and bamboo dipper at the Asian Store across from my office. When performing my tea ceremonies, I plan to wear my beautiful antique silk Kimono that my Japanese daughter-in-law's mother gifted me with.
Today, while reading more from The Book of Tea, I was inspired to bring the ceremony to Burningman this year. Then, in telling my friend, SueBee, about my new interest, she got all excited and wants to introduce me to a woman who runs a local art gallery and is interested in sponsoring performance art. She thinks a tea ceremony would be perfect. So, there are many possibilities for me here in this new cult of teaism that I'm seriously considering joining. It offers the lure of self-realization after all. Only time will tell how this all evolves. I'll post updates if there is anything more interesting to share.
Here are some of my favorite quotes from this book:
"Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence."
"Those who cannot feel the littleness of great things in themselves are apt to overlook the greatness of little things in others."
"For life is an expression, our unconscious actions the constant betrayal of our innermost thought."
"The tiny incidents of daily routine are as much a commentary of racial ideals as the highest flight of philosophy or poetry."
"O nectar! The filmy leaflet hung like scaly clouds in a serene sky or floated like water-lilies on emerald streams. It was of such a beverage that Lotung, A Tang poet, wrote: "The first cup moistens my lips and throat, the second cup breaks my loneliness, the third cup searches my barren entrail but to find therein some five thousand volumes of odd ideographs. The fourth cup raises a slight perspiration,--all the wrong of life passes away through my pores. At the fifth cup I am purified; the sixth cup calls me to the realms of immortals. The seventh cup--ah, but I could take no more! I only feel the breath of cool wind that rises in my sleeves. Where is Horaisan? Let me ride on this sweet breeze and waft away thither.""
"The tea-ideal of the Sungs differed from the Tangs even as their notion of life differed. They sought to actualise what heir predecessors tried to symbolize. To the Neo-Confucian mind the cosmic law was not reflected in the phenomenal world, but the phenomenal world was cosmic law itself. AEons were but moments--Nirvana always within grasp. The Taoist conception that immortality lay in the eternal change permeated all their modes of thought. It was the process, not the deed, which was interesting. It was the completing, not the completion, which was really vital. Man came thus at once face to face with nature. A new meaning grew into the art of life. The tea began to be not a poetical pastime, but one of the methods of self-realisation.
"Tea with us became more than an idealisation of the form of drinking; it is a religion of the art of life. The beverage grew to be an excuse for the worship of purity and refinement, a sacred function at which the host and the guest joined to produce for that occasion the utmost beautitude of the mundane."
"Our standards of morality are begotten on the past needs of society, but is society to remain always the same? The observance of communal tradition involves a constant sacrifice of the individual to the state. Education, in order to keep up the mighty delusion, encourages a species of ignorance. People are not taught to be really virtuous but to behave properly. We are wicked because we are frightfully self conscious. We never forgive others because we know that we ourselves are in the wrong. We nurse a conscience because we are afraid to tell the truth to others; we take refuge in pride because we are afraid to tell the truth to ourselves. How can one be serious with the world when the world itself is so ridiculous!"
"The Present is the moving Infinity, the legitimate sphere of the Relative. Relativity seeks Adjustment; Adjustment is Art. The art of life lies in a constant readjustment of our surroundings."
"To keep the proportion of things and give place to others without losing one's own position was the secret of success in the mundane drama."
"The reality of a room, for instance, is to be found in the vacant space enclosed by the roof and walls, not in the roof and walls themselves. The usefulness of a water pitcher dwelt in the emptiness of where water might be put, not in the form of the pitcher or the material in which it was made. Vacuum is all important because all containing...One who could make himself into a vacuum into which others might freely enter would become master of all situations."
And a poem I just adore, that was inspired by one of Edrid's Tea Ceremonies. It was written by Erik Grabow during the Master’s Training Course at Origin, 6/17/07
Care
With great care
we prepare the table
and Truth shows up for tea.
The beauty lights are burning more brightly now
as love pours itself from cup to cup
with such graceful abandon.
How is it
a single light can shine with such intensity
from so many faces?
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