Lu Yu Soul Man Part 3

Japan’s chanoyu, an aristocratic “high tea” in rustic disguise, acquired its final form from the Zen practitioner Sen no Rikyu, a Japanese contemporary of Shakespeare’s. Rikyu’s cult of tea may appear insanely refined to outsiders but it remains the ultimate practice of mindfulness— tea as medium for a religion-free form of Buddhism practiced long before Japan’s first encounter with a teapot. It seems only fair to conclude, however, that in Japan it’s the ceremony that’s the most important aspect of any tea ceremony, while in China the tea itself remained most important.

China developed the guywan, or covered cup method of steeping and imbibing leaf tea, and also invented the teapot. The first teapots were tiny earthenwares used for steeping oolong tea leaf, a new type of semi-oxidized tea. These were the new ways of tea prevailing in China by the time Europeans made the first direct contacts by sea with China and, inevitably, got their first sip of tea. In 1608 the first tea ever sent for sale in Europe arrived in Amsterdam, half a world away from its origin. Tea had already been known for more than 4000 years in Asia, therefore, when the West got its first taste just 400 years ago. Tea, in a short four centuries, has now drenched every culture on earth: Mankind drinks more tea than any other beverage but water, following traditions that range from Japanese tea ceremonies to Russian samovars to Scottish scones in the afternoon—India chai, China green, Tibet butter tea—you name it! The world-wide progress of this famous plant has always required a Lu Yu and a “Book of Tea.” As times and teas changed in China, successors authored almost a hundred re-writes of The Book of Tea to describe new ways of enjoying the new forms of tea. Tea has from the first been a practice whose enjoyment must be learned from a guru, a foreign practice from somewhere beyond the border, like an acquired language or art or skill.

And in every culture it has entered, tea has inspired the best loved of all the applied arts—tea wares. Whether you think of Chinese porcelain, Japanese earthenware, or English silver, it seems safe to say the cult of tea has produced some of the world’s finest artisan craftwork—objects intended for us to hold as well as to behold, things to love.

Each culture learned ways to love teatime as a moment of relaxation amidst the demands of daily life. But from the ancient Asian point of view—as Lu Yu might say—there is more to tea than the mental and physical refreshment it confers. Tea is also a sort of spiritual refreshment, an elixir of clarity and wakeful tranquillity. Respectfully preparing tea and partaking of it mindfully create heart-to-heart conviviality, a way to go beyond this world and enter a realm apart. No pleasure is simpler, no luxury cheaper, no consciousness-altering agent more benign. In every culture, taking tea somehow evolves into a ritual re-enactment of communion, a spiritual practice in other words, and by gradual degrees this becomes a Way—a Mirror of Soul—in its own right. The first priest of this secular Way of Tea was the author of China’s Book of Tea, Lu Yu.