Zen And The Art Of Tea
In this paper, my goal is to do two things: (1) de-romanticize the idea of enlightenment that is connected to the Zen culture, and (2) emphasize the art of the tea ceremony being a strong reflection of everything Zen signifies. It is my hope that at the end of this paper, the reader will find the taste of Zen, awakening, and tea to be the same.
I am aware that there are many different teachings that stem from the Zen culture, and many different teachers, schools, and ways of thinking within it that are important to note. However, I will not be going into too much detail with regard to these different sects and histories, for I have found that it usually strips away the essence and feeling of Zen and turns it into an object of study instead of a dance to be had. This paper is more concentrated on the flavor and totality of Zen than it is on the history and differences one can find within it.
To begin, it is important I say a little thing about Zen, (if I can say anything about it at all) for if we are unfamiliar with what it is, no real benefit will be gained from reading this paper. Here goes nothing… and everything.
So, what is Zen? If there is anything to be said about Zen, surely it must be that it is impossible to define. For it touches on aspects of the human experience that are impossible to define, categorize, and put into boxes. The one thing we can be sure of, though, is that it is a way of liberation whose goal is to reveal the ultimate nature of reality. And what is reality? Perhaps the best way to answer this is by replying in the same manner that Tu’ung Shan did when he was asked about the nature of the Buddha: “Three pounds of flax!” (Watts 1957, 125) If that answer didn’t quite make sense, I am afraid to inform you that that’s the point. For as long as you attempt to grasp Zen with the linear and analytical Western mind—which is so used to reducing and conceptualizing—you will miss it altogether. “For this reason, the masters talk about Zen as little as possible, and throw its concrete reality straight at us.” (Watts 1957, 125)
Unlike many religions, which point toward the Absolute by using symbols, Zen goes straight to the heart of it. Instead of knocking on the door of God, Zen smashes through it, or maybe even points out that there was no door there to begin with. Instead of encouraging you on your trek up the mountain, (as the yoga sutras would with progressive stages in the soul’s journey) Zen pulls the carpet from underneath you before you even begin your trek. And instead of giving you techniques or pieces of advice that can be easily followed with the linear mind, Zen places a bomb in the middle of your linear mind and laughs when it has been destroyed.
There is both a harshness and an element of rascality embedded within it. As Alan Watts wrote, “Zen has a definite and unmistakable ‘flavor.,” (Watts 1957, 77) but until you have tasted the flavor, it will always remain a fantasy of some sort, something that from afar looks rather peculiar and silly. I remember a philosophy teacher of mine during my undergraduate who was completely taken aback by Taoism and Zen. Coming from the Western analytical tradition, he found both of them to be non-sensical but in an impractical sort of way. Little did he know that both of these are nonsensical in the most practical way ever.
Trying to understand Zen from the analytical mind is no different than trying to understand how to use a hammer to turn a lightbulb. It is true to say that Bodhidharma and Daisetz Suzuki were philosophers, but not analytical ones. They didn’t see the world in straight lines, argue about the nature of God, and go from one premise to the next, adding up to reach a conclusion. They saw the world in its immediacy, before any such premise of the world could be formed by the mind, and before any conception of God could ruin the experience of freedom. They saw the world as a whole with many relative parts, not simply as parts that are apart from us.
Because so many people mistook the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself, Zen came into existence—or so it seems. Krishnamurti once spoke of a Zen master who entered a hall, and without saying any word at all, simply let the bird’s chirp. After this, he looked at the eager seekers in the room who had travelled from far and wide to hear his great words, and said, “The teaching is over.” Similarly, it is renown that the Buddha transmitted awakening to his chief disciple, Makasyapa, by holding up a flower and remaining silent.” (Watts 1957, 45). This is what Zen is all about—direct experience of reality as it is, or what the Mahayana tradition likes to call tathagata, which can be translated to mean “suchness,” “thusness” or “thatness.” And as Alan Watts wrote in his book The Way Of Zen, “When we say just ‘That’ or ‘Thus,’ we are pointing to the realm of the nonverbal experience, to reality as we perceive it directly, for we are trying to indicate what we see or feel rather than what we think or say.” (Watts 1957, 67)
So, even though I am writing an academic paper, a part of me wishes I could simply kick you in the chest, pour you a cup of tea, or dance in a spontaneous and splendid and authentic way to actually put the point across.
Now that we have a firm grip on what Zen is—or is not, more importantly—let us get on with the business of stripping down the misunderstood idea of enlightenment.
The first order of business is to perhaps use a completely different word altogether, for the word ‘enlightenment’ has connotations that are troubling for more than one reason. Firstly, for those who are unfamiliar with spirituality, using the term ‘enlightenment’ can throw people way off, and force them to think of metaphysical realities, angels, demons, and transcending truths that may occur as a result of a DMT trip. Many people think enlightenment is something absolutely extraordinary, something only an individual called the “Buddha” can attain that has to do with a different state of consciousness.
To no fault of their own, these people have attributed enlightenment to a certain type of otherworldly experience in an expanded state of consciousness, instead of a way of Being absolutely free in the world from the ordinary and undiluted condition of consciousness—consciousness as it is before any state of mind.
Enlightenment—what we will now call “awakening” or “satori”—is far simpler than one can imagine. In fact, it is so simple that it has the capacity to “blind us with clarity.” (if I may use the words of Thomas Merton) As Helmut Brinker notes in his book Zen In The Art Of Painting, “Satori takes place in everyday consciousness; it lays hold on and imbues body and soul in their togetherness as ‘individuality.’” (Brinker 1985, 4) The important thing to remember from this quote is that it takes place in everyday consciousness—that element in our experience that is easy to overlook because it is eternally present.
And what is it that is eternally present in our experience? Awareness. Awareness has and always will be with us. And I think it is important I clarify this statement as being a matter of fact, instead of just being a philosophical argument. This is what the modern non-dual teacher, Rupert Spira, has done such a fantastic job of alluding to in his teachings. As he points out in his book I Am:
“Throughout our lives we make statements such as, ‘I am five years old’, I am twenty-four years old’, ‘I am lonely’… and so on…In each of these statements we refer to our basic self or being— ‘I am—which is subsequently coloured by various thoughts, feelings, states of mind, activities or relationships.” (Spira 2021,1)
Check in with yourself here and see if this is true. Has there ever been, or could there ever be, an experience in which awareness is not present? The beautiful and sometimes shocking answer to this is, “no.” For even if you deny that awareness is present, you have admitted it. It doesn’t make sense to say, “I am not aware.” Only someone aware could say that!
It could be said that this is what awakening is all about: knowing that awareness has never left and could never leave— and being stabilized in such a realization. Thus, Hui-Neng’s proposal that “our true nature is fundamentally clear and pure” seems to be spot on.
And if our true nature is already “clear and pure”, what sense does it make to think of awakening as gradual? Surely the only gradual movement comes from the ego, which goes from place to place in order to find what has never left. Watts said it best:
“To be awakened is to be awakened completely, for, having no parts or divisions, the Buddha nature is not realized bit by bit.” (Watts 1957, 94)
Awakening is not about obtaining something, but rather of seeing what the true nature of yourself is made up of in this very moment. This is why Watts described it as being similar to a “sculptor revealing an image by the act of removing pieces of stone from a block.” (Watts 1957, 3) It is not about progress and building as much as it is about remembrance and refining. For if we look for the present moment and imagine it to be an object, we miss it; and if we imagine ourselves to be on some sort of journey, we forget who the subject of the journey is. When the content of consciousness is emphasized more than consciousness itself, we lose our way and create problems where none really existed.
To reiterate, this is all startlingly simple and subtle. There is a story that illustrates this. When asked what enlightenment is, a Zen master responded: “When I am hungry, I eat, and when I feel thirsty, I drink.” For the Zen tradition, awakening is nothing special—it is just being able to do what you need to do from an unconflicted place, from a place of extreme presence and intimacy. And here, I would like to interject with a story of my own that I feel the reader will find beneficial.
A few weeks ago, I went through one of the most difficult times of my life. My partner asked for some more space in the relationship, and instead of granting her that space with clear-headedness, I panicked. For about three days straight, I could not see or think correctly, for I was consumed by the trauma of my past and worried about being abandoned yet again. Everywhere I looked, I saw the state of mind I was in. The world was colored by my pain and filtered by my trauma. It was only on the third and last day, after getting no sleep at all, that I decided to walk onto the wooden platform outside our house and chant a mantra my teacher had given to me. With all my heart and soul, I chanted this mantra, with hopes that something—anything—would take away my suffering. What happened next is difficult to describe, but essentially there was a moment where I felt like all my psychic weight dropped off me. I got up from the platform and suddenly felt transparent, like the wind. I went from being a complete and utter mess to feeling at one with the world around me, and intimate with the ten thousand things.
My life at that point completely changed. Everything I did was done from a place of effortlessness and ease. Cooking became thoroughly enjoyable, eating became an extremely intimate process, and walking felt so perfectly natural. And yet, my state of consciousness was not expanded or altered; it didn’t feel like I was tripping on LSD or hallucinating on magic mushrooms. It was perfectly natural and uncorrupted by states of mind, thoughts, and petty movements of the imagination. All of this reminded me of what Alan Watts said with respect to Zen when he wrote that “The genuine Zen flavor is when a man is almost miraculously natural without intending to be so.” (Watts 1957, 102)
During this time of peace and quiet, the world began to meet me in miraculous ways. It was as if a curtain had been pulled, and now suddenly, the light could come through. In fact, I came to realize that the light had always been there but that it had been obscured by a certain kind of slumber I was in. People were magnetized toward me, money started to flow into my bank account, and some of my loved ones who I have not heard from in years reached out to me. I also felt a flow to the day that I had never felt before. Everything I did was in perfect harmony with the world around me; the events of the day ran like clockwork.
But even in telling this story, I feel guilty for painting a picture of awakening, because it may cause the reader to go out and find it in the same way that one would go out and find a piece of treasure. And as Alan Watts wrote, “As soon as nirvana is made an object of desire, it becomes an element of samsara.” (Watts 1957, 63) The point of the story was to illustrate how simple awakening is—and how much easier life becomes when it occurs.
It’s right here—all of it is. And it’s so simple. If reality were not so simple, many more people would be enlightened, but because it is here and now, we miss it. So many of us, for example, are caught up in thoughts of the past and future and reflections about this and that. Some of us even think that meditation or za-zen will take us to the promised land, when in fact, it might have the opposite effect, as it presupposes an ego who can get to a place other than the here and now. That is why it is said that
“To train yourself in sitting meditation (za-zen) is to train yourself to be a sitting Buddha. If you train yourself in za-zen, (you should know that) Zen is neither sitting nor lying. If you train yourself to be a sitting Buddha, (you should know that) the Buddha is not a fixed form. Since the Dharma has no (fixed) abode, it is not a matter of making choices. If you make yourself a sitting Buddha this is precisely killing the Buddha. If you adhere to the sitting position, you will not attain the principle (of Zen). (Watts 1957, 110)
Similarly, in the “Six Precepts” of Tilopa it reads:
“No thought, no reflection, no analysis,
No cultivation, no intention;
Let it settle itself.” (Watts 1957, 79)
Awakening is what happens when you finally see what you are not; when right and wrong are transcended; when all seeking comes to an end, and you finally get a glimpse into what is left behind. It is the moment awareness becomes aware of itself and you feel unconditionally free to participate in the world from a place that is authentic and stabilized in freedom.
Now that we are at least a little familiar with what Zen is (or is not) and what awakening is (or is not), let us delve straight into the art of tea, and hopefully join the dots together to arrive at a place where the words ‘Zen,’ ‘Awakening,’ and ‘Tea’ refer to the same thing but in different and unique ways.
If one is unfamiliar with the strong role tea has played in the Zen culture, it seems necessary to mention that there is a legend about the alleged founder of Zen, Bodhidharma, who, after falling asleep in meditation, decided to tear his eyelids off. When they fell onto the ground, legend has it that the first tea plant came into existence. However one wishes to interpret this—whether it’s through a mythical lens, metaphorical lens, or even a literal lens—it is proof that the art of tea, and tea in general, is intricately connected to the Zen culture—and for good reason. Not only does tea invigorate the mind, but it also sensitizes the body, laying the ground for satori to take place.
But it’s not just the “Tea with Hot Water” that allows the drinker to steep into presence— it’s also the aesthetic of the ceremony, with its emphasis on simplicity. In just the same way that everything that happens in life prepares us for the moment of liberation, everything that goes into the ceremony prepares the drinker to meet his Buddha nature.
Drinking tea may seem unextraordinary to those who are insensitive, but for those who are sensitive, it is delightful, and more than that, insightful. That is why it is said that “The taste of Zen and the taste of tea are the same.” (Watts 1957, 86) Everything about the tea ceremony—from the aesthetic to the actual drinking of it—is a reflection of the simplicity of awakening and the timeless presence one is engulfed in after awakening. But in just the same way that we do not go chasing after enlightenment as if it were an object of desire, we do not drink tea in order to attain enlightenment. We simply drink tea and see what happens. This is the magic of Zen: by just doing what we are doing with pure and utter presence, with no expectation of what’s to come, we may stumble into the truth. That is why Alan Watts said that “Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while peeling the potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.”
This can really be applied to anything you do in your ordinary life: chopping wood, drinking coffee, reading Alice In Wonderland, jumping on a trampoline, or even rocking your baby. Whatever it is that you are doing, if you are doing it with Zen, you are doing it properly—which is not to be mistaken for doing it in a rigid and strategized way. Indeed, because Zen has its roots in Taoism, it is not a mistake to say that for Zen the main principle is spontaneity.
Yes, it is a rather simple thing to just drink tea, but many people can’t just do one thing, for they are occupied with a thousand different things while doing one thing. In Zen, we do what needs to be done, but do not “entertain a thousand desires” or “untie a thousand knots” while doing these things. Doing just one thing at a time, and being fully there while doing it, could be another way of understanding the art Zen and the art of the tea ceremony. When we are fully there, with heart and soul, just drinking tea, a certain space is created that allows the ineffable to come through. In these moments, we stumble into the truth. It catches us off guard.
In my personal experience of drinking tea with loved ones, a timeless presence usually occupies the space I am in. As a result of this, I get “tea drunk”—and the discussion goes from one place to the next in a harmonious way. Of course, the matter of discussion changes, but one thing does not change—and that is the “infinitely expanded present” Watts writes about in his section on the art of tea, or cha-no-yu. But it is difficult to say why this is the case. Sometimes, we have to just let the mystery be. Certainly, the actual tea we are drinking plays a role in invigorating the mind and sensitizing the body, but it becomes impossible to know why it has the contemplative affect it does—and reducing it to mere chemicals seems like the antithesis of what Zen stands for. We know, for example, that members of the Ming regarded the art of tea as one of the highest forms of art, but I don’t think they knew the answer as to why tea created such an introspective environment—and I don’t think they cared to know. In the oriental cultures, there is not such a rush to figure things out. They are far better than Westerners at letting the mystery be. Li-Rihua wrote this wonderful excerpt that sums up the perfection and elegance of the tea ceremony:
“A simple room with a couch and a table, burning incense and a cup of tea, empty and uncluttered with other things. Just sitting alone in contemplation, naturally a pure and numinous energy comes to my body. The foul vapors of the world are thus gradually dissipated by this pure and numinous energy.” (Benn 2015, 179)
As I’m sure you can tell, the objects in the room Li-Rihua writes about are not out of the ordinary. He is not writing about a complex and overly designed environment, cluttered with the objects many Westerners deem necessary, like a television. There is a table, burning incense, and a cup of tea. And these things alone bring about a “pure and numinous energy.” While reading this passage as well, “We can see how the preparation and consumption of tea were highlighted as necessary elements in evoking a solitary, reflective, wistful atmosphere.” (Benn 2015, 179) Some way, somehow, “tea” became an idea in itself, an idea that stood for religiously inflected visions of the contemplative life.” (Benn 2015, 179) But I think it is wise if we don’t try to figure out why this is the case. One could also assume that the cultural emphasis on spaciousness and elegance, on simplicity and living an uncluttered life, combined with the art of tea, fostered an environment for awakening and living a life of contemplation and reflection. Alan Watts wrote about the ideal environment for cha-no-yu in his book The Way Of Zen:
“Ideally the house for cha-no-yu is a small hut set apart from the main dwelling in its own garden. The hut is floored with tatomi, or straw mats, enclosing a fire pit; the roof is usually thatched with ricestraw; and the walls, as in all Japanese homes, are paper shoji supported by uprights of wood with a natural finish.” (Watts 1957, 191) [DB13]
Here, the atmosphere is nearly just as important as the tea itself. The straw mats, fire pit, thatched roof, and wood all combine to compliment the act of drinking tea. There is a unity within all of this that allows the mystery to speak and be heard within us. The environment is set for something extraordinarily ordinary to take place, for the light of awareness to suddenly switch on.
In this paper, I have attempted to say what Zen is not, done my best to explain what awakening is, and connected the art of the tea ceremony with Zen and awakening. While there were different sections to the topics I discussed, it is my hope that the reader sensed an underlying theme of unity between all the topics, for Zen is about interconnectedness and intimacy, after all.
References
Watts, Alan. The Way of Zen = Zendō. New York: Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House, 2019.
Brinker, Helmut. Zen in the Art of Painting. London: Arkana, 1987.
Spira, Rupert. A Meditation on I Am. Oxford: Sahaja Publications, 2021.
Benn, James A. “Tea as a Religious and Cultural Commodity in Traditional China.” Tea in China, 2015, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.21313/hawaii/9780824839635.003.0001.