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  • In the West, philosophers write long non-fiction books, often using incomprehensible words

  • and limit their involvement with the world to lectures and committee meetings.

  • But in the East, and especially in the Zen tradition, philosophers write poems, rake

  • gravel, go on pilgrimages, practice archery, write aphorisms on scrolls, chant and, in

  • the case of one of the very greatest Zen thinkers, Sen no Rikyū, involve themselves in teaching

  • people how to drink tea in consoling and therapeutic ways.

  • Sen no Rikyū was born in 1522 in the wealthy seaport of Sakai, near present day Osaka.

  • Show map of this place.

  • His father, Tanaka Yohyoue, was a warehouse owner who worked in the fish trade and wished

  • his son to join him in business.

  • But Rikyū turned away from commercial life and went in search of wisdom and self-understanding

  • instead. He became fascinated by Zen Buddhism, apprenticed himself to a few Masters and took

  • to a life of wandering the countryside, with few possessions.

  • Zen Buddhism was founded by traveling monks, who believed that people best could find spiritual

  • meaning not by thinking complex thoughts or performing great deeds but by doing (often

  • very simple) things with intense thoughtfulness and concentration. The wise Bodhidharma, for

  • example, is believed to have stared at a wall for nine years with to improve his focus.

  • Rikyu chose to focus on something that was a little more refreshing than staring at the

  • wall: drinking tea. Today we remember him for the contributions he made to the reform

  • and appreciation of the

  • chanoyu (茶の湯) = Japanese tea ceremony.

  • It literally meanshot water for tea.” The Japanese had been drinking tea since the

  • 9th century, the practice having been imported from China by merchants and monks. The drink

  • was considered healthy as well as calming and spiritual.

  • But it was Rikyū’s achievement to put the tea ceremony on a more rigorous and profound

  • philosophical footing.

  • The Japan of his era had grown image-conscious and money-focused. Rikyū promoted an alternative

  • set of values which he termed

  • wabi-sabi (侘寂)

  • a compound word combining wabi, or satisfaction with simplicity and austerity, with sabi an

  • appreciation of the imperfect.

  • Across fields ranging from architecture to interior design, philosophy to literature,

  • Rikyū awakened in the Japanese a taste for the pared down and the authentic, for the

  • undecorated and the humble.

  • His particular focus was the tea ceremony, which Rikyū believed to hold a superlative

  • potential to promote wabi-sabi.

  • He made a number of changes to the rituals and aesthetics of the ceremony. He began by

  • revolutionising the space in which the tea ceremony was held. It had grown common for

  • wealthy people to build extremely elaborate teahouses in prominent public places, where

  • they served as venues for worldly gatherings and displays of status.

  • Rikyū now argued that the teahouse should be shrunk to a mere two metres square, that

  • it should be tucked away in secluded gardens

  • and that its door should be made deliberately a little too small, so that all who came into

  • it, even the mightiest, would have to bow and feel equal to others. The idea was to

  • create a barrier between the teahouse and the world outside.

  • The very path to the teahouse was to pass around trees and stones, to create a meander

  • that would help break ties with the ordinary realm.

  • Properly performed, a tea ceremony was meant to promote what Rikyū termed

  • wa (和) = harmony

  • which would emerge as participants rediscovered their connections to nature: in their garden

  • hut, smelling of unvarnished wood, moss and tea leaves, they would be able to feel the

  • wind and hear birds outsideand feel at one with the non-human sphere.

  • Then might come an emotion known as

  • kei (敬) = respect

  • the fruit of sitting in a confined space with others, and being able to converse with them

  • free of the pressures and artifice of the social world.

  • A successful ceremony was to leave its participants with a feeling of

  • jaku (寂) = tranquillity

  • sei (静) = purity

  • central concepts in Rikyū’s gentle, calming philosophy.

  • Rikyū’s prescriptions for the ceremony extended to the instruments employed.

  • He argued that tea ceremonies shouldn’t rely on expensive or conventionally beautiful

  • cups or teapots. He liked worn bamboo tea scoops that made a virtue of their age and

  • bamboo flower vases like this one, which he carved himself:

  • Because in Zen philosophy, everything is impermanent, imperfect and incomplete, objects that are

  • themselves marked by time and haphazard marks can, Rikyū suggested, embody a distinct wisdom

  • and promote it in their users.

  • It was one of Rikyū’s achievements to take an act which in the West is one of the most

  • routine and unremarkable activities and imbue it with a solemnity and depth of meaning akin

  • to a Catholic Mass.

  • Every aspect of the tea ceremony, from the patient boiling of the water to the measuring

  • out of green tea powder, was coherently related to Zen’s philosophical tenets about the

  • importance of humility, the need to sympathise with and respect nature, and the sense of

  • the importance of the transient nature of existence.

  • It’s open ended where this approach to everyday life may go.

  • It leaves open the possibility that many actions and daily habits might, with sufficient creative

  • imagination, become similarly elevated, important and rewarding in our lives. The point isn’t

  • so much that we should take part in tea ceremonies, rather that we should make aspects of our

  • everyday spiritual lives more tangible by allying certain materials and sensuous rituals.

  • Rikyū reminds us that there is a latent sympathy between big ideas about life and the little

  • everyday things, such as certain drinks, cups, implements and smells.

  • These are not cut off from the big themes; they can make those themes more alive for

  • us. It is the task of philosophy not just to formulate ideas, but also to work out mechanisms

  • by which they may stick more firmly and viscerally in our minds.

In the West, philosophers write long non-fiction books, often using incomprehensible words

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