The Japanese Tea Ceremony

The Japanese Tea Ceremony

The Japanese tea ceremony has long been linked to the idea of Wabi Sabi. This idea has its root in the arts of living, and how life is associated with nature and natural forces (quite opposite to the mass-produced world that is thrust upon us). Key to Wabi Sabi is an idea of imperfection – that nothing is perfect without it having some imperfection, some happy fault.

Some imperfections might not just spontaneously happen, but could be carefully planned. In the Japanese tea room flowers are displayed as they are in the field, so their shape is not perfectly uniform, but made to look haphazard and natural.

All five senses are used in the tea room to enjoy a cup of Matcha tea. Touching bamboo whisks, spoons and ceramics; smelling the Matcha tea and the incense from burning charcoal; seeing decoration and colours; listening to the noise of the steaming iron pot; and tasting sweets and the Matcha tea. Wabi Sabi is the harmony of all these working together, and how these are bound with nature.

Matcha powder has been drunk as tea since the 12^th century in China and Japan. The tea ceremony itself was developed from Zen ritual and has been practiced since the 15^th century, flourishing in the 16^th century under the great tea master Sen-no Rikyu.

During the Rikyu era, the tea ceremony became fashionable with the intellectual classes and became very popular with the powerful military Samurai. Rikyu invited these warriors to his tea room, but created a small entrance door (only three feet high), so that they had to take off their swords to enter the tea room. This forced humility upon them, and generated an idea of equality around the tea room, and promoting a notion of peace.

For those who experience the tea ceremony today there are many benefits and associations, especially in today’s busy 24/7 digital era. Benefits that can bring you close to nature’s harmonies, and the idea of Wabi Sabi - also other areas of health, from the medicine of Matcha tea itself to a greater mindfulness and wellbeing, and a deeper understanding of traditional cultural values and truths.

The Japanese art scholar Kakuzo Okakura wrote in 1906 that Japanese Tea-ism is essentially a worship of the imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in our impossible lives. We have seen with our tea ceremonies that it has been a way to understand each other better and work more positively together in deeper and more fulfilling ways.