Tea ceremony and tearoom: Shokin Tei
The tea ceremony emerged as one of the forms of Zen meditation
in which a simple ritual, tea preparation and drinking, cha-no-yu, deepened
corporeal awareness. Its founder Sen no Rikyū stated “ that life was a
continuum of moments of awareness, and the tea ceremony was a means of
intensifying this awareness.” 26 The tea ceremony, performed in silence, was
intended to achieve harmonious unity with the world and with the fellow
drinkers. The concentration on minute actions of drinking tea can “represent
the spiritual dimension made concrete in the everyday world.” 27 A receptive
and thoughtful participation in the ceremony is “ideally, an ontological
experience moving the individual to the bedrock of his being.” 28 In the
intuitively and experientially based philosophy of Zen, tea drinking was a way
of embodying Zen without any words: “The drinking of tea became a means
of teaching Zen on an experiential level, without words, but in an aesthetic
realm where silence can be more freighted with meaning.” 29 Introduced long
before, but established as an important Zen ritual by Murata Juko (Shukō)
in the Fifteenth Century, the tea ceremony gained immense popularity not only for its embodiment of a Zen experience but, in the secular world, as
an elegantly refined and aesthetic experience that elevated the individual’s
existence.