Happy New Year! While this is not the lunisolar new year that tends to have more influence on the natural phenomena around us, and, in turn, on the world of tea, I am excited to share with everyone new news as we begin this new calendar year: I’ve launched a new website, Tea Practice!
Over the past few years I began to actively source tea from farmers and collectors in East Asia, with a focus on traditional, hand-crafted, “foundational” teas that I’ve come to love over the many years that I’ve been practicing tea (茶の湯 chanoyu, 工夫茶 gōngfū chá, and the Korean Way of Tea), with the intent on providing an easier and more seamless way to share these teas with you, my readers, and all those who are curious and passionate about tea.
Tea Practice will feature teas from my previous seasonal tea collections, as well as new teas that I hope to source over the many seasons and years to come. There will still be pre-orders for those who want to get the freshest and most diverse array of teas, but also a regular collection of tea classics that will bear the qualities of excellence that define the traditional teas of East Asia.
Additionally, as the name implies, Tea Practice will become a platform for learning, acting as an access point for live in-person and virtual tea classes, workshop, lectures, tastings, meditations, and informal tea talks. It may also become a place where more detailed deep dives into tea and tea-related topics can live.
As for this blog, it will continue, as it always has, to be a place for my own tea musings, insights into my own tea practice, wandering words on tea topics, and vignettes into a life set to the pace of tea. I will continue to treasure this site as the jewel it is, with readers, like yourself, being a truly beloved source of inspiration and community.
As life continues on with its myriad of joys and challenges, especially as I dive deeper into parenthood, I am truly thankful for the continuation of my own tea practice, its evolution, and what it continues to teach me on a daily basis.
I encourage everyone who reads my little tea blog to take a moment to visit the new website, explore what it has to offer, and offer up your own thoughts, ideas, suggestions, feedback, and requests. Much like this blog, I want Tea Practice to support your own tea practice as we live and grown together.
With the coming of the new lunisolar year and the arrival of another new life into my little family, much of my time and attention has shifted away from my regular practice of tea. Whereas previously I had busied myself with creating seasonal tea collections, dedicated entire mornings to the study of 茶の湯 chanoyu, ans spent countless hours researching tea history, my life now seems to consist of irregular intervals of wakefulness and sleep in support of my growing family.
When a rare moment opens up in my otherwise fully engaged day, I find myself taking refuge in my tea studio. On this frigid early Spring day, I huddle myself beside an old kettle looking to taste and test a tea in preparation for the next tea offering through my little tea blog. Perhaps to help psychologically abate the cold outside my studio walls, I bring forth a recently acquired piece of teaware; a small vintage porcelain 蓋碗 gàiwǎn, the surface of which is adorned with swirls of flowers festooned alongside a rose-pink overglaze in a 洋彩 yángcǎi (lit. “foreign colors”) style made popular within the Imperial Kilns of 景德鎮 Jǐngdézhèn during the reign of 乾隆 Qiánlóng (1735-1796).
The tea I select is one I haven’t had in a long while, and dare I say it is a tea I often overlook. Usually overshadowed by the 武夷山巖茶 Wǔyíshānyánchá “cliff tea” that bears the same name, 水仙 Shuǐ Xiān 單欉烏龍茶 dān cóng wūlóng chá is a treat for the senses. Grown, harvested, and processed on the slopes of 烏岽山 Wūdōngshān in the 潮州 Cháozhōu region of northeastern 廣東 Guǎngdōng province, China, it tends to be a greener, less roasted, often less oxidized Phoenix oolong.
Much like their counterpart from Wǔyíshān, the leaves are long with a thin profile. I note how evenly formed they are, carefully twisted, and consistent in their color, slightly darker than what I typically find from farmers whom I work with.
Before I begin to brew the tea, I take a moment to appreciate the gàiwǎn. Each of its parts, the base, the cup, and the lid, offer clues into its production. The style of porcelain the little vessel is attempting to reproduce is called yángcǎi (a type of Famille Rose to Western classification of Chinese porcelain), which emerged during the first half of the 18th century in the Imperial Kiln of Jǐngdézhèn under the supervision of famed writer, playwright, and ceramicist 唐英 Táng Yīng (1682-1756).
The pink overglaze, which in finer forms is applied evenly, building up only to enunciate the scrollwork and floral motifs, is, in this later mid-20th century form, is uneven, creating interesting variations in the depth of color, tone, and transparency of the pigmented enamel. Pink becomes magenta becomes purple, becomes white in a charming, if not slightly cursory manner. Flowers and vines swirl in curls and swirls amidst the rose field. Upon each portion of pigmented porcelain piece are four blank roundel, centered within each a Chinese character. When read together, they produce a popular auspicious idiom 萬壽無疆 Wànshòuwújiāng, roughly translating to “ten thousand years of boundless longevity”.
Looking closer at each piece, even more details about the gàiwǎn are revealed.
On the center of the cup’s foot, in red glaze lettering, read “中國景德鎮 MADE IN CHINA 32” (Zhōngguó Jǐngdézhèn Made in China 32, “China Jǐngdézhèn Made in China 32”). While the Chinese text denotes that the porcelain was made in the kiln city of Jǐngdézhèn, a city that has been producing porcelain since for over 1700 years, the 32 refers specifically to the factory where the piece was manufactured (and possibly decorated and fired), the 竟成公社彩繪瓷廠 Jìng chéng gōngshè cǎihuì cí chǎng, “Jìngchén Commune Painted Porcelain Factory”.
Shifting one’s gaze to the center of the cup, under closer inspection, one can make out the faintest of imprint of the number “88”. While the number 88 is seen as a lucky number in traditional Chinese numerology, 八八 bābā, which sounds similar to the term for wealth發 fā, (which implies 發財 fācái), as well as the number’s visual similarity to the decorative character 囍 (shuāng xǐ), which means “double joy”, in this instance, the imprinted “88” refers to the actual date of production (1988).
With my trusty stainless steel electric kettle boiling quietly by my side, one I’ve used now since I first started practicing 工夫茶 gōngfū chá more than twenty years ago, I pour a small draught of hot water into the waiting gàiwǎn. The light of midday sparkles inside the cup.
Emptying the vessel of the hot water, I place the wiry tea leaves in the center. In an instant, the aroma of the tea is activated, quickly filling my studio with the delightful flavors of the Shuǐ Xiān dān cóng.
I can’t help but to pause for another moment to inspect the leaves, drawing my gaze closer to the center of the porcelain cup, enjoying the contrast made between the fragrant, dark, twisted tendrils and the creamy white ceramic with a hint of the rosy overglaze shining through its almost transparent walls.
With the water at a full boil now, I pour enough to cover the leaves. As I pour, I watch the stiff Shuǐ Xiān tumble in the water against a backdrop of white. The color of the water quickly begins to shift from clear to slight blush tone. Even before the lid of the gàiwǎn has closed, the tea begins to express itself.
As the tea steeps I let my eyes wander past the glass doors of my tea studio, up into the cold blue sky of early Spring in the Hudson Valley. Cotton candy clouds billow across the azure expanse, iridescent at their edges indicating their icy contents. The mountains, too, glimmer in the sun, their snowy peaks polished smooth from wind and the occasional ice rain that has visited these past days.
Tracks in the snow across my garden.
Clear ice on the pavement of my patio slab. Early Spring is a moment of transformation and transition.
I peer back down onto the gàiwǎn, tilting the lid to check the deepening color of the tea’s brewing liqueur.
I lift for a moment the lid to inspect the leaves. They’ve fully unfurled, as best they can for the first steeping.
I decide to decant the tea into a teabowl, rather than drink directly from the porcelain vessel. I do this in part to enjoy the color of the tea against the glaze of an antique Japanese 茶碗 chawan, the color and crackle I feel perfectly complement the tea, and to also allow me to assess the change between the first and subsequent steepings as it is my hope to test the tea against a thirty-six point rubric that I’ve developed to evaluate a tea’s various qualities.
As I pour the liquid into the small teabowl I am delighted to see how brilliant its color is. A beautiful rich toned amber hue emerges, bright at the edges where it thins against the slope of the teabowl’s walls, darker yet more luminous in the center where the chawan is deepest.
I inspect the steeped leaves and breathe in the aroma that lifts off of the emptied gàiwǎn, noting the intense scent of pomelo rind and aged citrus peel (橙皮 chéng pí in Mandarin) that fills my nostrils. I turn to the waiting teabowl and take in the fragrance of the tea liqueur. It is markedly different, maintaining the prominent citrus notes, but offering up additional notes of warming spice and tropical fruit.
I take a first sip. The tea washes over my tongue and soft palate, into the hollows of my cheeks, and to the back of my throat. There is aged citrus peel, fresh pomelo, orange blossom, guava, and light (almost grassy) notes of tobacco leaf.
While what my mind attaches itself to are words and ideas that guide it to better understand what I am experiencing even with such a small amount of tea dancing about in my mouth, what it aims to define is just tea. The flavors, as diverse as they are, are just tea.
Beyond flavor, textures emerge. Soft, juicy, slight astringency playing across my mouth and to the back of the throat. There’s body to the liqueur, a fine weight to the liquid that allows the effects of the flavor and sensations to sit and linger. There’s a lively aftertaste which produces an even longer articulation of the transitions of each flavor from citrus to fruit to floral to herbaceous and, finally, smoky. There’s finish is long, complex, enjoyable as the taste of ripe guava, orange blossom and tobacco return. A sweet peach kernel and tart cherry emerge as the 回甘 huí gàn (lit. “Returning sweetness”) is revealed.
As I finish the first bowl of tea, I set forth to produce another. In total, I must have brewed the tea ten to twelve times.
As each successive brew was produced, I marked its progression in my notes, observing the flavor growing in depth and complexity from steepings one to five, beginning to sweeten by the third and forth, and starting to wane by the sixth and seventh, until the tea became ever sweeter and lighter by the tenth and twelfth steeping, until the robust flavors of the first brews were replaced with the floral and honey-like notes that continued until I was satisfied.
For a tea that could last as long as this, the results on myself were palpable. The 生津 shēngjīn (lit. “life haven”) of the tea made my body feel nourished and energized, producing the companion effect of causing a refreshing sensation of the moistening of the mouth and viscera.
There was strong 喉韻 hóu yùn (lit. “throat rhyme”), with flavors still rich and full bodied even after the last of the tea had passed my lips. The 體感 tǐ gǎn (“body sensation”/“physical perception”) was vibrant yet grounding, causing a vital and warming sensation as the tea permeated my body. And, finally, the huí gàn, which was present even in the first steeping, had continued and transformed into a beautiful bouquet of flavors across my palate.
In the lingering light of the late afternoon of the early Spring day, I pause to inspect the tea once again as it sits in the porcelain gàiwǎn. Like the tea, I find myself fully spent. It is only mid-February and, yet, the year feels incredibly busy and my life increasingly full. With January saw the birth of my second child, and, since then, I’ve found little to no time to practice tea. When I do, I bring to it a greater focus than I have in the past. I find myself taking more notes, assessing the tea more closely, observing its changes as if to study the tea.
Part of this approach is fueled by my desire to source great tea and share it with my readers through my seasonal tea collections. However, I also have come to realize that I do this to become more fully absorbed in the moment and in the tea itself, pushing it to a greater appreciation in a similar manner to how I push the tea I brew to express the most potential from it. It’s a strange experience, a mixture of relaxation and exploration, the other side of the same coin that I’d not turned over in a long while. To 品茶 pǐn chá is to taste tea, but it is also to test tea. To enjoy tea and also to experience tea on all its many levels.
Looking again at the now emptied and cleansed gàiwǎn, I find my eyes reading over the four characters of 萬壽無疆 Wànshòuwújiāng. Each character sits clearly in its own white circle against a tangle of flowers, florescent curls, and uneven pink overglaze. In a piece that attempts to replicate the finest of imperial wares of the 18th century, it remains modest, unabashedly rough.
Amidst the clamor and busyness, the messy qualities of caring for a newborn and a growing family, I can’t help but to feel as if the four words and the object that they’re written on hold more significance for me than ever before. Boundless longevity set beside a cacophony of color, of flavor, of tea brewed inside porcelain walls, of the same porcelain walls that let the sunlight pass through and cause the tea liqueur to glow like amber, of sleepless nights that fade into mornings, of often overlooked tea finally given chance to be reexamined, of life that has become so occupied that one must make time to appreciate its nuances, of the nuances that will happen regardless of whether one appreciates them or not. In this time, as I grasp for any given free moment to continue to hone my tea practice, I find myself tasting tea and testing tea. I find myself tasting life and life testing me.
Sometimes I find myself waiting for the perfect day, the perfect time to act, to practice, to write, to say what I may have been mulling over for a while but don’t yet feel compelled or confident enough to state because “now” is not the perfect moment. Days go by, then weeks, then months. Soon, as the end of the year approaches swiftly, that perfect day continues to elude me. I, much like the garden outside my studio, remains frozen, locked in a state of torpor.
For almost a year I’ve not been able to write. Not that I haven’t written, but nothing that has reflected my practice. Certainly, even as I haven’t been inspired to write, I still have managed to produce text. This has namely been the descriptions of tea that I’ve begun to offer through my little tea blog, something I, too, had been waiting for years to do.
This stasis has extended to my practice in tea. I tell myself that I’ve been too busy, or that the weather is too cold, or that something else is too much or too little. Such thinking has kept me from walking the short path from my studio door across the garden and into my little makeshift tea hut. As such, the little structure has remained empty, save for the mouse that has made its four walls its home.
Being a father of one (and soon to be two) has kept me incredibly occupied, with my heart and mind constantly full of joy and of things to do. While I often find myself leaning on my practice of 工夫茶 gōngfū chá as a “quick fix”, it is the pause and meditation of 茶の湯 chanoyu that has languished and has almost ceased to exist.
The time spent in front of a boiling kettle, seated on the floor, tucked inside the quiet retreat of my makeshift tea hut has dwindled. A year ago I wrote of my hut beginning to show signs of decay. Now, as December wanes, has my practice begun to do the same?
I look outside my window. The little structure wet from rain. Moss growing on the rooftop, on the door frame. It is an imperfect day to make tea. A cold wind whips and tears the remaining leaves from the almost bare maple trees that hang overhead. A cold rain pelts down. A small break in my busy day appears. Not much time but perhaps it will be just enough.
I put the kettle on and fill an old thermos. I gather wares in an old tool box. I open the door of my studio and slip outside.
The path is wet and covered with scattered leaves and debris. Winter is alive but feels compressed against the earth, huddled and cold.
The stones that lead up to the tea hut are wet and green, set against a field of orange and red pine needles, from which what remaining verdant life springs.
Clutching my tool box in hand, I enter the little hut. Inside it is bare. The sound of the wind between the cracks whistles and wines. The cobwebs shine, and evidence of the current occupants are tucked inside corners and in crevasses.
I set the wares against the imperfect floor. Pressed particle board and plywood instead of the pristine 畳 tatami that my teacher implores me to invest in. The objects, in their earnestness, seem to shine against this spangled expanse. A lacquer tray. An enameled box. An old thermos wrapped in a leather case.
I light a candle and place it in the 床の間 tokonoma. I light incense. The aroma of the old temple I once visited replaces the smell of the wet and weathered wood.
Objects emerge and are rearranged before me.
An old bowl. A trusty 棗 natsume.
A scoop and whisk.
The silk of my 袱紗 fukusa and the water from the thermos wipe away the dust of the world.
Each object comes alive as they are cleansed and appreciated.
Their imperfections become jewel-like in the low light of the little wooden shack.
The rain against the wind and the quietude of each action casts its own glow and shadows within the concaves and undulating volumes of each ware.
The walls of the 茶碗 chawan glitter in this light, despite its drab completion. A crack in the surface where the slab of clay was fused runs like a vein of gold through a stone.
Bubbles and pockmarks glisten when wetted. In each imperfection resides a story to tell.
In what seems to have been a year’s span, I open the natsume again for the first time.
The bright green of 抹茶 matcha glows wild and wide in the little world of the wooden container…
…inside the hollow of the teabowl.
Shadows collect in the dark empty of the chawan.
They collect against the tines of the 茶筅 chasen.
Water is poured.
Tea is whisked.
The space and the moment inside the little makeshift hut is transformed.
In the world where many thresholds exist, tea allows us to cross over them.
The boundaries between my studio and my garden, the stone path and the entrance to my hut, between one floorboard and another.
In chanoyu, we traverse this world, entering through one space into another, constantly.
The bowl is passed from host mat to guest. From one set of hands into another. The tea, too, travels, from container to bowl, from bowl to body.
A void becomes a void again.
What remains is just the residual residue caught in the darkness, until this, too, is wiped clean and discarded.
The separations between host and guest, between one space and another, between action and inaction blur and fade.
In my own meditation on this, I realize that some boundaries were of my own creation.
The desire of perfection…
…and the fear of anything but…
…that has kept from engaging with what is real.
Outside the confines of my mind are a myriad of imperfect days, all of which present me with endless perfect opportunities to practice.
This practice, itself, is a collection of the imperfect.
Of old and broken bowls. Of tattered tines. Of dust the collects on purple silk. Of a door that fails to keep the cold from coming in.
Of mud that clings to the soles of my shoes as I cross through my garden, from studio to hut and from hut back to home.
I want you to experiment with me for a moment. Just breathe. Breathe in the air that currently occupies your space. Breathe in the air that surrounds you, holds you, is your world in this very instance. After you’ve taken your first breath, I want you to now pause and, for the span of a few seconds, I want you to notice the flavor of the air. Is it sweet? Savory? Spicy? Is the flavor dull, sharp, simple or complex? How does the air feel as it goes from your nostrils to mouth to throat to lungs to belly? As you have fully inhaled and held that breath, I want you to now exhale, letting the air leave your chest, through your throat, mouth and nose. How does this feel? How does this taste? What lingers and fades? What remains? What feels as if it will never return to you again?
In the practice of tea, whether it’s 工夫茶 gōngfū chá, 茶の湯 chanoyu, the Korean Way of Tea, or other forms, the taste of tea is an integral part of both the experience, as well as a guide through the process of preparing tea. Over the many years that I’ve practiced the various forms of tea, the taste of tea has been a stalwart companion, pointing the way towards my learning and further delving into attaining deeper understanding of tea, as a plant, an agricultural product, an art, a cultural entity, a historical continuum. The taste of tea has taught me how to better brew a 烏龍茶 wūlóngchá, discern quality of a freshly harvested 작설 jakseol, and tell me if I’ve properly whisked a thick bowl of 濃茶 koicha. Without the taste of tea, I believed I would feel directionless, groping for something to hold onto in the dark. Yet, this is exactly what happened.
During the final days of 2023, amidst the Winter festivities and celebrations leading up to the new calendar year, my daughter and I became sick with the COVID-19 virus. So reduced was I that upon the heralding of 2024, I could barely muster the strength to write down my intentions. Soon thereafter, my wife, too, contracted the virus and, for several days, we all remained home in our shared sickbed (save for our dog, who escaped the sickness yet kept us company throughout the entire ordeal).
After our energy came back and our fevers broke, we returned to our regular routines. However, one aspect of the illness remained for me. For weeks and then past an entire month, I was unable to sense taste. For the first time in my life, for a frighteningly long period of time, I tasted nothing.
The first moments of this were oddly novel, enjoying a sense of emptiness that I’d never felt nor experienced before, ever. I’d prepare a bowl of 抹茶 matcha, one to mark the turning of the year, and taste nothing. I’d close my eyes, thinking that the momentary removal of my visual sense might help me to focus on finding what little flavor could be perceived and, still, nothing arose.
I soon began to marvel in this meditation. A sudden leap into a deep nothingness. A pure and vast abyss to explore. Nothing, so I thought, to attach one’s self to.
Alas, as the mind always does, it found a foothold.
In the emptiness emerged other clingings. The sensorial mind is one that habitually always wants to feel something and, so, it seeks anything to attach itself to, to analyze, to explore and identify. Soon each cup of tea became a means to wander through a new and unknown world, a realm of the senses, albeit one unencumbered by the sense of smell and taste.
The realization that taste, whether it was through aroma or through flavor perceived in the mouth and throat, was my primary way of understanding tea, I began to hone in on the other various avenues that now took center stage.
Surprisingly, touch became first of the senses I explored. During the weeks I could not taste, I recall gravitating towards a particular 宜興 Yíxìng teapot. A small 羅漢 Luóhàn (Arhat) shape teapot made of aged 朱泥 zhūní clay, made in the late 1980s/early 1990s. I had acquired it during my days as a graduate student, when I’d spend weekends escaping my studies to travel to tea houses up and down the coast of California.
In the particular instance when I found this teapot, I was in my old college town of Santa Cruz, visiting my friend April Shen’s antique store. I remember April handing me two, almost identical, teapots. Upon releasing both pots into my hands a loud thunderclap rang through the air and the electricity in her warehouse instantly shut off. Plunged into darkness, I was left to discern the qualities of both teapots without my sense of sight.
I remember how my hands felt each of the tiny vessels, first feeling their respective weight, then the texture of their exteriors, comparing both but treating each as if they were their own worlds. I could sense their volume by the shape of their bellies. I could determine how they would pour by the curve of their spouts. I felt for balance in the hand, how they would feel during use. I remember spinning and lifting the lids off of each to compare how fine the fit and crafting was. Tapping the lid against the body of the pot to determine the clay’s firing and density. Feeling the ridges and “architecture” of each of the pots to determine how structured each pot was, how the water would run off of and collect along these exterior forms, and how this would, in turn, affect the brewing of the tea.
With a sudden whir and clap, the lights turned back on and I remember looking down at each pot in the electric light, seeing them for the first time with my eyes and, yet, already knowing so much about them. I ended up getting both.
Sitting in my studio with the pot in the daylight of late Winter, I could appreciate all of the nuances I’ve come to know about this little 宜興茶壺 Yíxing cháhú (Yíxìng teapot).
As the sound of the kettle softened and water within it came to a boil, I started by warming the pot, observing the steam rise out from its dark concave. I could hear the sound of the water pushing up and around inside it, changing pitch as it slowly climbed up its interior walls.
The sound of the lid lifting off from the center of the three gathered adjoining 品茗杯 pǐn míng bēi (lit. “tea tasting cups”), and the corresponding sound of the lid setting atop the opening of the pot.
The feeling of the warmth radiating from the little teapot and then the warmth of the steam that rose from the cups as I transferred the water from the pot into them.
Emptied now, the pot awaited its next role in this play of objects.
From an antique Japanese 染め付け sometsuke blue-and-white tea jar (originally used for holding 煎茶 sencha leaves), with images of orchids rendered in blue colbalt upon its cool white surface, I drew a measure of tightly curled tea leaves.
Leaves of uniformed marbled colors of dark green, russet and red. Leaves that were harvested last Spring yet leaves I’ve grown accustomed to since I was a young boy.
Traditionally oxidized and roasted 鐵觀音烏龍茶 Tiěguānyīn (lit. “Iron Guānyīn/Avalokiteśvara/Bodhisattva of Mercy”) wūlóngchá from 安溪 Ānxī county, southern 福建 Fújiàn province, China, from the same farmer who’s made this tea now for many decades (if not for half a century).
Unable to enjoy their dry aroma, I was left to admire their visual beauty and to discern their quality on their merits of physical consistency. Lifting the old bamboo tea scoop, I readied the leaves to enter the awaiting teapot.
Using a twig I’d pulled from a fruit tree years ago, I slowly pushed the leaves into the vessel…
…working to ensure that they fell and arranged themselves…
…into a nicely formed heap within the warm clay pot.
Pouring boiling water over the leaves, I took a moment to observe the first brief moments of the steeping process. Oily foam rose and collected along the circumference of the teapot’s open mouth. Steam swirled in tiny cyclones off of the surface of hot liqueur. Tea leaves lifted and tumbled and fell in what looked like a tiny choreographed dance.
Closing the teapot, I sat and waited for the meniscus bubble to travel down the spout of the teapot. I sat and waited for the teapot’s color to deepen, from a bright sanguineous red to a deep lustrous crimson.
As I waited, I cleansed and emptied the warming cups.
As I waited…
…I listened to the quiet hiss of the boiling kettle.
Pouring a tea that I could not taste was a new experience. The color starts off pale and slowly grows deeper.
From one cup to the next and back again, the tea continues to decant, further steeping as long as it remains within the pot.
By the last draught, the tea is fully steeped. The last few drops are purported to be the best, offering the sweetest and most complex flavors.
Alas, I’d taste none of these.
Looking down into the three cups, looking down at the emptied pot (save for the unfurled tea leaves it contained), I recall the sense of anticipation. Having navigated the flavorless abyss for more than a month, I’d succumbed to the possibility that this might have become my new life, as so many have already succumbed to Long COVID. I did not fear this, although I wondered how I would continue to develop my tea practice with what I felt was an insurmountable challenge.
During this time, I constantly reminded myself that the basis of gōngfū chá was to attain skills through challenging oneself, and this instance was no different. A teacher leaf. A teapot. Hot water. Warm cups. Cold air lingering in my studio. These were challenges I’ve faced and overcome before. No taste would also have to be met and new skills to address this would ultimately arise.
I remember lifting the first cup. I studied its deep amber hue, noting that it was not one uniform color but a myriad of different shades and tones. How at its center the color appeared vibrant and clear, and how it shifted along the edges, with hints of green, purple, and gold.
As I lifted the cup closer, I made an attempt to smell the aroma (as I’d done time and time before my sickness had struck). While no scent was detected, I could feel the warmth of the tea radiate and enter my nostrils, reaching into the back of my throat and soft palate.
As I took my first sip, I aerated the liqueur with an audible slurp. The smallest of sip to pull the tea back over my tongue, back to the upper reaches of my soft palate, and back to the entrance of my throat. Here, where typically I would taste tea, I could feel the heat of the liquid. Here, too, what emerged, as if from shadows, were the properties of the first steeping.
In place of the complex swirl of flavors that a traditionally oxidized and roasted Tiěguānyīn displays, I could feel the tea produce sensations across the interior of my mouth and throat. Where there would normally be an initial sweetness balanced with a mild bitterness, followed by a cascading array of floral notes ranging from marigold to honeysuckle to rose, there were textures, shifting rapidly from slick and viscous to sticky like butterscotch, astringent like pomelo rind, and dry like the tannic sensation of eating walnut skin. The palate awoke despite being unable to taste and the mouth and cheeks reciprocated with salivation. The finish was met with slight tightening of the sides of the cheeks and back of the throat, followed by a long and lingering softness, both dry and moistening, building from the first small sip to the second and finally to the completion of the first cup. As I breathed out from my throat and into my mouth, these sensations echoed and remained.
I sat for a moment in wonderment. The words that my many mentors, teachers and trainers from my past seemed to well-up inside of me. These words, classic descriptors from Chinese tea culture used to give a linguistic framework for understanding tea’s complex vocabulary of flavors and sensations, suddenly started to come back to me.
收斂性 Shōuliǎn xìng may be used to describe the astringent quality of tea when it feels akin to biting into a rind of a fruit or akin to the astringent tannins found in higher oxidized tea. Though sometimes associated with rougher teas, if the tea is well-crafted, this quality can be balanced and interplay with the sweeter flavors of the tea. Traditionally oxidized and roasted Tiěguānyīn contains a subtle tannic quality, an enjoyable boldness that waivers on bitterness. While I could not taste this, the drying, tingling, and slightly puckering sensations caused by the tannins present in the tea were very present.
生津 Shēngjīn (lit. “life haven”) refers to the aspect of tea that can quench one’s thirst through the moistening of the mouth and generation of saliva (sometimes less poetically referred to a 口水 kǒu shuǐ, “mouth water”). The sensation is pleasant, revitalizing, and nourishing. Even after the first cup’s sensations lingered in my mouth minutes after I had completed it, I could still sense this aspect of its quality. My body, despite my lingering symptoms, felt nourished, relaxed and revitalized by the tea.
回甘 Huí Gàn (lit. “return sweet”) is the first of the long lasting sensations a tea can leave in the body. It is the convergence of bitter and sweet, producing a long and complex lingering finish which is the hallmark of a high quality tea (especially oolong tea). As I finished each sip of tea from the first cup, I could feel the confluence of the drying astringency with the silkiness of the sweet meeting in the back of my throat and returning to coat my mouth. This felt as if the tea was opening to new complexity, the beginning of its expansion across my senses despite not being able to taste the tea itself.
喉韻 Hóu Yùn (lit. “throat rhyme”) is expressed when a tea has been fully consumed and leaves a pleasant, resonating sensation in the throat. The “rhyming” comes with the subtle harmonizing of the sensations in the mouth and soft palate with that of the throat. Tea connoisseurs often consider that the taste of the tea is often at its richest and most complex when reflected in the Hóu Yùn. However, as I perceived it without my abilities to taste the tea, I could still feel the slick, smooth, rich textures, and complex, long and lingering sensations it left in my throat.
體感 Tǐ Gǎn (“body sensation”/“physical perception”) started to arrive after the second cup, and only in a slightly perceptible way. Tǐ Gǎn refers to the physical experience that tea brings once it has fully entered the body, changing the way the body feels and how the tea is perceived as it moves through the body. The warming qualities of the tea liqueur can be felt as it makes its way down the throat and to the stomach. There is a slight increase in the body’s vital energy as it begins to metabolize the tea. This coincides with a cooling effect as the sweet and bitter flavors subside and refresh the mouth, throat and body.
All the flavors described in tea are caused by a kaleidoscope of different naturally occurring chemical compounds, each of which also have their own attributed sensations. Catechins, a type of tea polyphenol, causes slight pleasant grassy bitterness in tea, but also can produce a slight astringent sensation. Caffeine, which contributes to bitterness, is also drying. Caffeine is also one of the primary compounds found in tea that wakes up the body and mind. Tannins contribute to a bitter and astringent taste in tea also helps to give the tea its body and complex texture, ranging from a slight drying sensation, to sharper, more interesting tones that linger and fade. L-theanine, an amino acid which contributes to a balanced sweetness in tea, can also be perceived in the freshness of the tea and the clean texture on the palate and throat. It, like caffeine, is responsible for the slight “pick-me-up” tea produces, but also promotes a sense of bodily relaxation. Finally, carbohydrates such as fructose, sucrose, and glucose, all of which are produced by photosynthesis, contribute to the complex sweetness of tea, as well as the long returning sweetness, fading soft textures, and refreshing energy evinced in Huí Gàn, Hóu Yùn and Tǐ Gǎn.
Finishing the last of the three cups, I endeavored onward to brew the tea again.
The leaves, almost fully open from the first long steeping were covered once again in the boiling water from my kettle.
Closing the pot once more, I used the pause as an opportunity to continue to feel the tea and its energy course through my body.
Late Winter in Upstate New York is marked by intermittent days of ice and snow. One day the mountains will look dark and bleak, the next they are set alight in a dusting of fresh snow.
Outside in my garden, snow had been piling up, creating a soft, cold world…
…where shadows cast long and blue…
…where footfalls of wild animals traced…
…where the old life of last year stood rigid and bare…
…where the sun pushed through treetops and gently sloughed off the snow by midday.
In my momentary existence of my tastelessness, I reveled in the not knowing and feeling my way back to tea. As the snow covered and concealed forms all around, so, too, did my lingering symptoms. Sipping tea as if it were medicine both for the mind and body kept me sane in a sense as I tumbled through this novel if not terrifying experience. A challenge to meet and make friends with and learn what all I could from the interaction. In conversation with my sickness and my body, the tea was telling me more than I could have ever imagined.
A second steeping and I could feel my cares drift away.
A third, and my body began to feel lighter.
A fourth and fifth…
…and the tea’s color lightened.
Six, seven, eight more steepings…
…and the tea and I kept pace.
Nine and ten and I began sitting up, rambling around my studio, searching for books on my shelf, my body electrified with the energy of the tea.
Eleven and twelve and I began to spin in a light hearted joy, finding pause in my attempt to decipher the calligraphy carved onto an old bamboo tea scoop.
茶醉 Chá Zuì (lit. “tea drunk”) soon gripped me, a culmination of all of tea’s remarkable sensations into a giddy, relaxed, and settled feeling. For those who ascribe to it, the 茶氣 Chá Qì (the tea’s frequency, energy, life force, literally “breath”) was surging through me, as palpable as the myriad of sensations that continued to play across my nostrils, tongue, cheeks, soft palate, throat, stomach, chest, forehead, body, and mind.
While I tasted no tea that day, as I cleaned my old 朱泥茶船 zhūní cháchuán (lit. “cinnabar mud/clay” “tea boat”), I remember looking down into its empty concave form. Slick with the cool water now evaporating from its soft skin, I could see the many layers of tea oil that had settled into it, giving it a fine patina of time and experience. Used for decades now, the brick-red of the clay shone like a jewel, even if it were just an old dish. The secondary nature I’d always ascribed to the piece seemed more artificial on this day. What I’d seen as a vessel that collected the off-pour, the overflow, the space around the teapot, now seemed more primary in its purpose. The cháchuán lifts the teapot off from the table, providing it a place to be used, clear from anything but itself and the tea it contains.
Here, too, I began to think of how the senses often take varying levels of prioritization when one 品茶 pǐnchá, the term classically used when tasting tea. However, the character 品 pǐn is comprised of three mouth (口 kǒu) radicals. In a more expansive translation of pǐn, “taste”/“tasting” can be read as “to grade” or “to judge/discern quality or character”. The three mouth radicals, too, may be linked to the multiple ways one consumes tea, not just to taste with the mouth but to see with the eyes, feel with the body and perceive with the mind. In this understanding, to taste tea is to taste it with all the senses. To see it, to savor it, to feel it beyond the flavor alone.
In the months that followed my recovery, I slowly but eventually did regain my abilities to taste tea. However, I still find myself seeking for those moments fleeting after I’ve sipped a cup, after I’ve finished a brew, when the feeling of tea is all that remains, perhaps as a reminder of this brief time in my life when it was all I had.
It’s November. Look around. What do you see? A world spinning, almost as if out of control. Firm forms feel frayed at their edges. Weathered and tattered against the cold. The old balance tilts and we are left wondering if it will ever be restored. Should it?
The march from Autumn to Winter can feel endless, but, assuredly, it begins as the first leaf changes color, as the first swift cold wind pushes its way beneath your coat, as the soil in the garden cools, as the first sign of decay becomes unavoidable. Decay comes in many forms, startling and sad. In the world of tea, one can’t help but to anticipate its arrival for once it is here, we cannot help but to welcome its presence into the tearoom.
In early Winter, this comes with the transition from the portable 風炉 furo (lit. “wind furnace”) to the 炉 ro (sunken hearth), bringing the heat of the hearth closer to the guests, a welcomed sight as the days and weeks grow ever-colder. Yet, even before this, for a brief moment, the stability of the tea space is shaken. The furo does not immediately disappear, but, instead, shifts to the center of the host’s mat (点前座 temaeza), and the 水指 mizusashi (fresh water jar) is placed further away from the guest. This arrangement (中置 nakaoki, lit. “center placement”) typically only occurs in October (although I tend to practice this throughout Winter), and, like an Autumn leaf which clings to the branch of a weathered tree, this captures the essence of the tenuous nature of the world before it, too, plunges headlong into a new form.
The observance of decay is core to the practice of tea. Indeed, it is the celebrated quality that defines 侘び寂び wabi-sabi, and that guides the aesthetic of 茶の湯 chanoyu towards the austere and rustic, the simple and imperfect, the modest and asymmetrical. The lack of balance that is everywhere in the world, which at times can create the sensation of a wild, tumbling free fall, is what drives chanoyu from moment to moment. Not static, but dynamic, by early Winter, this crashing is captured perfectly by the gentle sound of a sudden but brief rain (時雨 shigure), of the soft rustle of red 紅葉 momiji leaves that fall and curl against the cold earth, of the silence that arises when the first snowflakes dance across the grey November sky.
In my tea space, now weathered by the years, decay seems to become more apparent each time I open its door.
I can tell how often I have enjoyed its company by the steady growth of cobwebs that have been forming against its lone window, a gift from a spider I’ve befriended since late Summer. Her web, a silken shelter, kept warm by the thin walls of my makeshift tea hut, appears to me as a readymade art piece, which I choose to celebrate as much as the scroll or flower I set in my 床の間 tokonoma.
She, like the moss that grows on the roof and vine that creeps between the crack in the door, reminds me that even with decay there is vibrancy and life.
As I let my kettle boil and allow the temperature of the small room to rise, I arrange teawares beside it and enjoy the sound of the wind outside. The darkness of the tea space is broken by light reflecting off of lacquer and catching against the interior of a black teabowl.
The black lacquered 棗 natsume holds within it enough tea to entertain a party of guests, but today I practice alone. The image which adorns its shining surface of a gathered bundle of wood, an axe, and a gourd fashioned into a drinking vessel, all rendered in gold and silver dust by artist 田中平安 Tanaka Heian, feels in accordance with the world around it.
It represents a meager collection of what’s left over by the remainder of the year. Leaves cast about, brilliant in their sheen, but no longer secured atop their trees, are left to wither and rot. The axe, often emblematic of virility in the context of traditional Japanese symbolism, feels more utilitarian against the heaped and tied-up twigs.
A quick look out the window of my teahouse reveals a similar image as I have recently begun the closing of my garden for the Winter, all it’s missing is the 瓢箪 hyōtan gourd and its magical powers.
The teabowl, a 黒楽茶碗 kuro-raku chawan by famed ceramicist 佐々木松楽 Sasaki Shōraku III, feels cavernous in the dark space.
Unable to see to its bottom, it calls to mind the concept of 幽玄 yūgen, which evokes the feeling of the unknown within a dark and mysterious world. Into the concave I first pour hot water to cleanse and warm the bowl.
Then three scoops of tea.
A half ladle of hot water from the kettle…
…and then the tea and water concoction is whisked into a bright foam.
As I sit and peer down into the bowl, as I listen to the wind and sound of the steaming kettle…
…the din caught within this little world of tea feels as thin as the walls around me.
It’s hard to sit for tea when the world is seemingly spiraling out of control. Losing one’s center can feel uncomfortable. The sure thing one might have clung to, now gone, can feel destabilizing. Fear, sadness, and, at times, terror can arise.
But with decay comes the removal of superfluous forms. Trees without their leaves reveal the branches beneath, cold and bare.
The structures, once obscured, now can be examined for what they are.
Sometimes the mightiest of trees can appear spindly, more vulnerable once they have been stripped of their verdant garb. Huts, too, once decay sets in, let slip their secrets, weak points in walls, gaps where gusts of wind pour through, cracks in their foundation.
In observance of decay, I look to myself, to my hands, to the skin that wraps around these bones. How they hold each object for tea.
How they’ve practiced for almost twenty years to learn how to move and place the various wares in accordance to an oral tradition that stretches back for centuries.
I wonder how the movements they make have been maintained over time, and how the muscles in my body now know where to place each object.
I question if their eventual decay over time will mean the deterioration of my practice, as the body weakens and memory diminishes.
As I close the lid of the steaming kettle and of the cold water jar, I close my tea practice session with a final 拝見 haiken.
As I look upon the natsume once more, I see my hands, my body, my face reflected in the slick surface of its black lacquer.
In its mirror-like finish I can see myself.
I notice how my skin has changed with time, how my beard has grown.
I see someone who at this time last year was not yet a father and now sees himself as one.
I see the past and the present collide.
In my study of tea, I study myself. As I study myself, I see that which I’ve known as myself change and dissolve over time.
As that self changes, transforms, decays, it is eventually forgotten, actualized by the myriad of things that surround me in this chaotic world.
Body and mind, like leaves on a tree, drop away.
No trace of the old self, of the body, the mind, the tea, the lacquer container, the tree, the leaves, the world we knew remain.
Once fully decayed, everything gone, what continues on?
As late July’s heat hangs and the humidity rises, bodies grow heavy and slump in the ever-present languor of the day. My tea practice, too, finds the warmth unbearable save for the earliest of morning and the final darkness of the day. Here I find a momentary respite and relief from the heat of Summer’s end and the approach of an eventual Autumn’s arrival.
Traditionally this was a time of year to avoid strenuous work lest one’s constitution weaken and succumb to illness. In the cultures of East Asia, where tea practice first took root and evolved, folk traditions abound which met the need to abate the potential spread of plague. One such practice, which continues today in the Gion district of Kyōto, is 祇園祭 Gion Matsuri.
Originating as a 御霊会 goryō-e, purification rituals to appease evil gods and the spirits of the dead following a plague epidemic that ravaged Kyōto in 869, it has since evolved into a complex series of ceremonies and events that span the whole of July, many of which still maintain their original purpose of promoting health and protecting the local population from sickness during the high heat of Summer.
Just as the year makes its way towards the first days of Major Heat (大暑 Taisho in Japanese), things couldn’t get worse in my household. Having just recently celebrated her fourth month, my daughter received a series of inoculations and, subsequently, came down with a fever. Stressed to see her in such a state, my wife and I found ourselves barely sleeping for three days straight, seeing to the needs and recovery of our young daughter. Our minds in a constant daze, we’d often imagine of ways to comfort her.
On the third night her fever began to break but I still could not sleep. As my wife and child rested, I stepped out into the early twilight to prepare to practice tea. The garden still asleep, I make my way across the span that separates my home and hut in which I have been making tea in now for three years.
I light incense in the dark empty space of the tea room. In the alcove I set a single flower, a purple 木槿 mukuge (Rose of Sharon), its buds still unopened. I carry water, kettle, and other assorted wares with me into the wooden shed, leaving the door ajar as if to invite the growing light of early morning to join me.
At this early hour the world is quiet. The sounds of human activity remain mostly dormant. No low hum of engines, no high peal of aircraft, no chatter of neighbors, nor the throb of a lawn mower in the distance to busy my mind. Just the sound of the kettle and the water within it coming to a boil. Just the song of morning birds. Of crows in the pine trees waking. Of deer gently crushing grass beneath their hooves. Of the tree branch lightly tapping the moss-covered roof of my makeshift tea hut.
In the pristine world of the morning I begin to cleanse the objects to make tea.
Lacquer catches the light as does inlaid abalone on a tea container covered with seven precious objects.
A wide antique teabowl, moistened 茶巾 chakin, weathered whisk.
Objects first set side-by-side, then one in front of the next.
The lacquer is wiped and so, too, is the 茶杓 chashaku.
The old teabowl is emptied of its objects before hot water from the kettle is poured within it.
Uncovered, the center reveals a circle where once in the kiln another bowl would have rested. Now, in my mind, I think of an 円相 ensō. A circle painted with a single stroke, its sured path reflecting the perfect peace of mind.
The circle, too, carries an additional meaning during Summer, calling to mind 茅の輪 chinowa, temporary circular portals of cogon grass through which people pass during Summer purification rites, to help protect them from sickness and evil.
The whisk is wetted and flexed in the hot water.
The bowl is emptied and wiped clean. I breathe and pause for a moment to think about those who still sleep inside my home. My daughter who has been fighting a fever. My wife, who has been unwavering in helping her through her momentary suffering.
As I lift the chashaku and then lacquered 棗 natsume, I expand the circle wider. I think about my parents and their health. To my sister and brother-in-law and their newborn child. To my wife’s mother. To her late father. To my wider family and dear friends. To those who have passed through my lives. To those I’ve never met. To my teacher.
Three scoops of tea. Cool water from the 水指 mizusashi mixed with the hot water of the kettle.
The cup of the 柄杓 hishaku bows and pours half of its contents into the open 茶碗 chawan.
Tea powder and water blend and the concoction is whisked into a velvety foam.
Once prepared, I reset my stance and offer the bowl to the space of the guest.
I stand and place myself where the guest would sit.
I enjoy, first a sweet.
Then the bowl of fresh 薄茶 usucha.
Once drunk, I let myself sit for a while to meditate.
Tea was once and still is seen as a medicine. Its bitterness a quality first favored by the peoples who first cultivated the plant more than six thousand years ago in a region that now straddles the borders of Laos, Myanmar, northern Thailand, southeastern Tibet, Yúnnán and Sìchuān, probably first as a food source and then as a sort of panacea to ward off a multitude of ailments.
While it has become a trend for modern audiences to paint the practice of tea as an exercise in mindfulness, with the rather whimsical (if not overly exotifying) marketing casting it as some form of mystical art in the same way zen or yoga or the other myriad of Eastern-born cultural traditions have been exploited and re-imagined for capital gain, tea, and the various practices that it can engender, can support a healthy life.
Away from the panoptic gaze of social media and its pervasive voyeuristic demands to capture and ostensibly share everything, away from the crowds that flock to public tea events and performative demonstrations, away from the pay-to-learn pathways that might lead the unknowing astray, and away from the targeted advertising of tea as a lifestyle, there is a humble and down-to-earth practice of tea that is healthy.
As I continue to deepen my tea practice, my desire to write and photograph and share tea in virtual manner is fading. The weight of life and supporting those in my life has grown and, with it, its importance. Tea, and my daily practice of tea, has also grown, equally, if not more so, than ever before. And, yet, the weight of it has lightened.
Like a great bundle of extraneous “stuff” I’ve carried for years, I feel the congestion of my old practice lifting and dropping off my shoulders. The worries and desires melt away. The wanting to make big waves subsiding and calming in favor to small ripples. What I crave now, more than ever, is the intimacy of sharing tea with myself and the moment, or, at most, between one or two other friends. My wife. My child. My teacher. An honored guest. An old friend.
I share these little glimpses into my practice because I know there are some who use them as a meditation and, as someone who appreciates tea writings, I, too, hope my readers find some value in what I write. However, to read about tea and then to actually sit for tea are two very different things.
I practice for a multitude of reasons. For enjoyment, for relaxation, for focus, for a form of deeper understanding that comes when I can just sit and make a bowl of tea. There are many movements that come before I sit. Many actions that come together before I can make a bowl of 抹茶 matcha. I must be limber and fit to sit in 正座 seiza for several hours at a time. I must be mentally and physically alert to prepare tea at any hour. I must be flexible enough sit and be fully present in times that are agreeable and disagreeable. I must be resilient to do this not just once but for many years. For a lifetime.
All of this helps. It is a sort of medicine I make for myself and, perhaps, for others too. This is, as I see it, tea for health.
With wares cleaned again, I pause once more. In shadows cast by growing morning light, objects and their shapes become more pronounced. In these shadows and with the sun’s glow that joins me, I decide to make a final 拝見 haiken.
Light glints and bends off of the rounded shape of the lacquered natsume. The various images of the 七寶 shichihō, which often make their first appearance during New Years, have been chosen again, this time as a symbolic safeguard against illness. Seven treasures, each with their own purported powers, have been dutifully applied in gold lacquer 蒔絵 maki-e by master artisan 市中 五稜 Ichinaka Goryō, with a noted exception of the 隠れ笠, kakuregasa (“hat of invisibility”), which he rendered with a thin veneer of iridescent abalone shell.
Next, I reach behind me and grasp the handle of the chashaku. From left to right hand the object passes until it, too, is placed atop the wooden 香盆 kōbon.
Finally, both object placed side-by-side, I sit and appreciate the qualities of both wares.
The the early morning light, the objects appear softer, lighter.
Undulations of the chashaku scoop and the minute remains of tea dust that still cling to its tip appear in a dreamlike state.
The glow of the abalone catching reflections of daylight.
In selecting these objects I make a nod to the time of year and the significance the growing heat can have on one’s health. With talismanic imagery such as the shichihō, the mukuge, the chinowa, I acknowledge and hope to assuage the anxiety I have as a parent trying to keep my child healthy.
This practice I’ve conducted over what is now twenty years, has evolved. The challenge that comes from making tea, in the growing heat of Summer and in the growing heat of this little world, I find myself returning back to this practice now more than ever.
When a child is sick, when the world is ailed, there exists for a moment a sense of hopelessness. The mind stirs and cannot rest. Where one once found comfort, either in sleep or joyful activity, now feels unbearable. All one can do is to sit and meditate. In the meditation that is tea practice, I find I can engage with these emotions, with the difficulties of these situations.
Rather than be a distraction or anecdote to the stress of the modern and wounded world, tea is a mirror, a microscope to the microcosm that is the self.
To bring awareness that one is sitting amidst the world of agreeable and disagreeable situations, here is where one will acquire the strength to endure.
As light filters through the open door, as the heat of the day rises, I look to the alcove to see that the purple mukuge flower has opened.
July fourth came and while much of the country remained asleep, I wake and began preparing for tea practice an hour before the sunrise. Slinking from my bed so as not to wake my wife and baby daughter, I make my way downstairs. A candle is lit, a stick of burning incense is placed into a tripod censer, a container of fresh-ground 抹茶 matcha is put aside to acclimate to the heat of the day, and a kettle is set to boil. In the twilight of the morning I gather and prepare both implements and mind for お稽古 okeiko (tea lesson) with my tea teacher, the first since my daughter was born.
The previous day my teacher had asked me to prepare to practice tea not in my indoor studio as we had done every time before but, instead, outside in my garden shed. With Summer Solstice (夏至 Geshi/Xiàzhì in the old lunisolar calendar), the heat of the day is too strong to want to make tea during normal active hours. Instead, tea gatherings (and practice) is best conducted during early morning and in the evening when the air is coolest. 朝茶 Asacha (lit. “Morning tea”) is preferred, as the light of the morning is gentle and one’s consciousness is given the opportunity to wake with the world around it.
Collecting my wares, I trek across the grassy divide that separates my house from my garden shed. Between, I pass flowers and plants as they slowly begin to wake, still covered in sparkling dew and collected rainwater from a midnight shower. A caterpillar still sleeps along the length of a bright green branch.
A stalk of blooming yarrow growing beside my vegetables catches my attention and I lean down to pick it, setting it into an old cut bamboo 花入 hanaire I’ve brought with me for today’s practice.
A fresh leaf of wild grape is cut from the vine to be used as a lid to a glass 水指 mizusashi.
Once settled in my makeshift 茶室 chashitsu, I pour water into my iron and bronze 風炉釜 furogama and wait until it comes to a rolling boil. The gentle sound of rain begins to beat against the roof of the shed, coming and going like a cool breath.
I sit and wait for my teacher to call. We’ve been meeting virtually for years now since he lives in Paris and I, now, in New York. The digital divide seems vast yet, when I see him on the other side of the computer screen, the distance does not seem so far. We greet one another with a bow and I offer to walk him through my garden path that leads from my house through a patch of trees and eventually to my makeshift tea hut. The stones that lead the way are wet and becoming more and more overgrown with time. Leaving the doors open, the growing light of the morning pours into the small shed as I begin okeiko.
The mizusashi with a leaf for a lid is brought out and placed beside the kettle. This morning I’ve chosen to practice 葉蓋点前 Habuta temae. While I usually reserve this for 七夕 Tanabata, it feels right to do this today, as the freshness of the leaf lid seems in line with the refreshing feeling of the Asacha gathering.
Next, an offering of sweets, fresh-picked mulberries, is made to my teacher. This is fitting as one of the star-crossed lovers of Tanabata, 織姫 Orihime (lit. “Weaving Princess”), is also sometimes referred to as the 梶葉姫 Kajinoba-hime (“Paper Mulberry Princess”), a link to the 和紙 washi paper made from the paper mulberry upon which wishes are written upon.
Finally, the other tea objects are brought out and arranged before me in order to prepare a bowl of matcha.
A red lacquered 茶桶棗 satsū natsume (lit. “tea bucket” natsume). A wide Vietnamese celadon teabowl from the Lý and Trần period (1009-1400). A old 茶杓 chashaku. A 茶筅 chasen made of dappled bamboo.
A 柄杓 hishaku and a ceramic 蓋置 futaoki.
The gentle hum of the boiling water continues to rise as I cleanse each object, first with the silken 袱紗 fukusa and then the hot water from the kettle.
My teacher offers guidance here and there, correcting my posture, the way I hold an object, the way the 茶巾 chakin first cleanses the corner of the 敷板 shiki-ita and then the shoulder of the bronze 風炉 furo before first placing it down on the shiki-ita, then, eventually, atop the lid of the chagama. All the while, I try to maintain my focus and even breath so as not to stop the constant flow of movements that go into preparing a bowl of tea.
This, since I first met my teacher over fifteen year ago, has been the steady basis of my practice. Layers of guidance, corrections, movements, memories.
Objects cleansed, I offer my teacher the mulberries as a tea sweet and begin to prepare a bowl of tea.
The lid of the natsume is removed.
Three scoops of matcha are carefully placed in the center of the old 茶碗 chawan.
Excess tea powder is gently tapped off of the curved tip of the chashaku.
For a moment I stare down into the concave created in the heap of tea powder held inside the lacquer tea container.
The leaf that covers the mizusashi is lifted carefully and tilted over 建水 kensui. A large drop of water rolls down its surface, letting out a satisfying resonating tone as it falls into the wastewater bowl.
Instantly, I feel refreshed.
Cold water is lifted from the mizusashi and blended with the hot water of the kettle. Cooled to the appropriate temperature, I pour half-a-dipper’s worth of water into the teabowl and whisk the tea into a soft delicate foam.
The gentle sounds of rain and birdsong blend as I bow and offer my teacher a bowl of tea. He then offers to me the bowl I’ve made for him as he has done time and time before.
I bow and enjoy the mulberries and bowl of tea from the position of the guest. For a moment I imagine he and I are sitting together in my makeshift tea hut. The space between us feeling not so far.
Finishing my first sip of tea, my teacher asks me how is the flavor. The tea is fresh, having been ground and gifted by a dear friend in New York City’s East Village. The flavor surrounds me in a sweet air.
I finish the tea with two more sips and my teacher then asks me to then smell the interior of the bowl. The aroma of matcha still remains, almost stronger now than it was when the bowl was full.
The warmth of the tea still radiates through the ceramic, although cooling as I hold the empty chawan. A refreshing feeling as the morning’s heat rises.
I return now to the place of the host to clean each tea object. Cool water to cleanse the wetted implements. Soft silk to purify the dry wares.
The whisk is set with its thin tines pointing upwards to help them dry faster in Summer’s heat.
The bowl set beside the natsume once more.
The light of the morning shines and bends through the glass mizusashi.
The kettle is closed and objects set aside.
I perform a final 拝見 haiken with the guidance of my teacher.
Selected tea wares are examined and their usage and reason for selection explained.
The chashaku is covered in tiny spots to reflect a wish for Summer rain.
The red lacquered natsume to reflect a link between tea and Buddhism and earlier Korean and Chinese forms.
The Vietnamese tea bowl, with its foliate design on its outer surface, represents a lotus flower, which bloom in July.
Why now? Why today? Why bring these objects together under such circumstances? And why all this for the enjoyment and contemplation of both host and guest? These are the unspoken questions of a tea gathering.
It is the Fourth of July, and yet I feel no desire to be patriotic. Why celebrate the birth of a country that was founded on the premise of the preservation of slavery, on the inequality of different races, on the genocide of the native peoples? Why celebrate when this nation still denies equality to all, still denies the atrocities it has committed, still wages wars, still destroys the environment at a horrendous rate?
Rather, the fourth, for me, is a questioning of the nature and danger of independence.
The perilous quality of pure individualism and the alienation that can come from seeing oneself as being truly independent.
Instead, I offer tea today to my teacher, who joins me virtually from France, as he’s done so for well over a decade now, as a meditation on the notion of interdependence.
As an acknowledgement and celebration of the reality that we are all connected. To be humbled by this quality, that we are neither wholly independent nor fully dependent in our lifetimes. To recognize the importance that we ultimately must rely on everything and everyone around us to exist, all the while, realizing that there is still the possibility for each of us to be our own selves.
To make a bowl of matcha in a manner that evolved from practices handed-down and influenced by Chinese and Korean forms in Japan from a millennia ago until today.
To offer it in a centuries-old Vietnamese celadon chawan to my tea teacher who lives in France over a virtually assisted medium. To sit in the Hudson Valley, in a small makeshift tea hut fashioned from plywood sourced from the timber from forests of Canada. To whisked tea freshly ground by friends who live in New York City.
Nothing in this interconnected web of events, objects, and beings is independent. No existence is more valid than the other. Nothing is alone or alien. Nothing arose by itself, but through the influence and confluence of other external forces do they come into being. They are all interdependent. Linked, like two star-crossed lovers who meet if only for once a year across the Milky Way, through space and time.
March arrived and with it came the birth of our daughter. A full moon, a cold night, rain that turned to snow as we left for home from the birthing center where she was born. Upon our arrival, the dog greeted us with joyful anticipation which quickly turned to confusion which turned to trepidation as if to announce to us the obvious, that life would never be the same.
It wasn’t long after returning home that the magnitude of this change hit me, as if for the first time, all at once. Teary-eyed as if caught between sadness and shock, I looked to my wife who was more resolved. For her, the change had been more gradual, the reality of our child and the role of being a parent being more present for her during those thirty-eight-and-a-half weeks of her pregnancy.
As for me, nothing seemed to have prepared me for the coming of a child into this world. Not my wife’s pregnancy. Not the countless articles we read nor the endless teachings we received. Not the Summer that turned to Fall, that turned to Winter, that hinted at Spring. All this time and due diligence seemed only to have gotten me so far.
The true learning, I’ve found since then, comes only in the free fall. In the crisis of life. In the crying, the feeding, the sleepless nights that turn to tired days. In the passing of our child from the hands of my wife to mine and back again. From the consoling of our newborn when she weeps, to the support of my wife when she says I’m a good father and the reassurance I give her that she is a dedicated mother. Our new roles embodied and realized as we step into our new practice, each day, each instance, one after the next.
In the momentous change that has since come to my little life, it seems ridiculous to think beyond the immediate. Long has been the time that’s lapsed from when I first was able to find time to write. Less time, for sure, has passed since I have been able to sit and make some tea, first for myself and, then, eventually for my brother-in-law, who traveled with my sister across the continent to visit our new and scrambled family. For him, a bowl of 抹茶 matcha was all I could muster, a gift for him as he awaits the birth of a son, as if to tell him that everything will be alright, but not without its challenges.
In these briefest of moments where I am able to collect myself, feel my way through the process of making tea, I wish for a sense of clarity and calm, only to realize that in this practice, one that exists in and outside of child-rearing, the flavor of fatherhood cannot be escaped, dulled or numbed.
Instead, I find myself dreaming. Dreaming due to lack of sleep. Dreaming of time that’s since passed and no longer exists. Dreaming of words I could potentially commit to a page, of bowls and cups of tea I could make a share with friends far-flung, of my many unfinished projects that wait for me and may never see their end.
My makeshift tea hut, which still contains the many dreams of becoming one day a full-fledged 茶室 chashitsu, looks at me from across the garden as if with the same longing eyes as my dog, wishing for more time to be spent with it, not sure where or if that time will ever come.
Without consistent sleep and my once-regular practice of tea, I live my life as if I were in a dream. In these restless nights, I see darkness turn to day. The ink black sky, with its faint kaleidoscope of stars, slowly warms to a gentle indigo just before the Sun breaks over the horizon.
Light filters through the branches of the trees which, in Winter were bare, now, in Spring, are full and flap with foliage and bear within them the voices of songbirds and night owls.
One such morning, as the light of dawn grows, and my wife and daughter sleep, I sit in a tenuous silence and decide to make tea. Dreamy celadon accompanies me for an existence now that feels like a dream, one seemingly born from a dream that then folds into a dream, just one I’ve only just begun to recognize is not fully my own.
Poet 莊子 Zhuāngzǐ’s butterfly’s dream seems a fitting companion to this new life. A question of whether I or the butterfly are the holder of the real state of being. Am I the dreamer or the dream? Is my life wholly my own or is it now just a space within which my newborn daughter can exist, explore, and play?
In the dream state of morning’s twilight, before the plaintive cries of my daughter arrive, before I must return to my partner’s side, I wait for water to boil. Unwrapping a small pressed cake of 冰島古樹普洱茶 Bīngdǎo gǔ shù pǔ’ěr chá, I notice that leaves which were once a silvery white have tempered and aged, turning orange and brown with time.
Breaking off a small portion to place in an awaiting scoop of bamboo, I am reminded of the old tradition in southern China where, upon the birth of a daughter, cakes of tea were set aside and left to age. These 茶餅 chá bǐng would then become part of her dowery, a show of value gained over the years, a reminder of the weather and harvest of the year she was born into this world.
An empty vessel, first dry, is wet and warmed, and left waiting for leaves of tea to be placed within it. The rounded volume of the tiny teapot evokes the potential for creativity all the more this morning. Time taken to sit between the waking hours of my wife and daughter to enjoy a moment of tea, coupled with the realization that their rest is just as much a meditation.
Water pours forth from the kettle and sends the flattened leaves tumbling within the tiny world of the teapot’s interior space. Earthen hues of speckled clay offset by earthen hues of tea leaves aged.
For a moment, I watch the steam swirl, the curled leaves unfurl, and let my mind wander to and from dreams.
Dreams of what’s to come.
Dreams that drift and pass like clouds.
Dreams that arrive during sleepless nights.
Waking dreams.
Exhausted dreams.
Personal dreams.
Collaborative dreams.
Dreams of wanting and of goals desired.
Dreams of letting go of dreams.
Dreams of a child transforming over time.
Dreams of dreams that have yet to form.
Dreams that have not yet been dreamed.
Morning’s light rises and settles, warming surfaces both wooden and clay. Cracks in the ceramic’s glaze become clear.
Colors in the tea deepens with each subsequent steeping. Shadows darken as the daylight grows. Bird’s songs amplify and then fade against the din of the brightening day. The first rustlings of my daughter come as she wakes from her dreams. My wife’s voice calls as she beckons me.
I've been a student of tea for well over a decade now. I've learned a lot along the way. This is an exploration of tea and the practice that has developed from it.
Scotttea 