The Book of Tea

by Okakura Kakuzo

ISBN 0-8048-0069-3 (Tuttle Publishing) © 1956 (forty-six printing, 2000)

First published in 1906.

The Cup of Humanity

page 3-4: teaism

Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence. [...] It is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something posible in this impossible thing we know as life.

The Philosophy of Tea is not mere aestheticism in the ordinary acceptance of the term, for it expresses conjointly with ethics and religion our whole point of view about man and nature. It is hygiene, for it enforces cleanliness; it is economics, for it shows comfort in simplicity rather than in the complex and costly; it is moral geometry, inasmuch as it defines our sense of proportion to the universe.

page 5: with tea

In our common parlance we speak of the man "with no tea" in him, when he is insusceptible to the serio-comic intersts of the personal drama. Again we stigmatise the untamed aesthete who, regardless of the mundane tragedy, runs riot in the springtide of emancipated emotions, as one "with too much tea" in him.

page 5:

But when we consider how small after all the cup of human enjoyment is, how soon overflowed with tears, how easily drained to the dregs in our quenchless thirst for infinity, we shall not blame ourselves for making so much of the tea-cup. Mankind has done worse.

page 6:

Those who connot feel the littleness of great things in themselves ar apt to overlook the greatness of little things in others.

page 13:

Colonial America resigned herself to oppression until human endurance gave way before the heavy duties laid on Tea. American independence dates from the throwing of tea-chests into Boston harbour.

page 14:

Samuel Johnson draws his own portrait as "a hardened and shameless tea-drinker, who for twenty years diluted his meals with only the infusion of the fascinating plant; who with tea amused the evening, with tea solaced the mindnight, and with tea welcomed the morning."

page 14-15: teaism

Charles Lamb, a professed devotee, sounded the true note of Teaism when he wrote that the greatest pleasure he knew was to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident. For Teaism is the art of concealing beauty that you may discover it, of suggesting what you dare not reveal. It is the noble secret of laughing at yourself, calmly yet thoroughly, and is thus humour itself,--the smile of philosophy.

page 17:

Meanwhile, let us have a sip of tea. The afternoon glow is brightening the bamboos, the fountains are bubbling with delight, the soughing of the pines is heard in our kettle. Let us dream of evanescence, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things.

The Schools of Tea

Dynasty Name	Dynasty Period	Brewing Method	Tea Form
Tang Dynasty	608 - 917	boiled	cake
Sung Dynasty	960 - 1279	whipped	powdered
Ming Dynasty	1368 - 1644	steeped	leaf

page 19-20: there is no recipe

There is no single recipe for making the perfect tea, as there are no rules for producing a Titian or a Sesson. Each preparation of the leaves has its individuality, its special affinity with water and heat, its hereditary memories to recall, its own method of telling a story. The truly beautiful must be always in it.

page 20-21: periods of tea

Like Art, Tea has its periods and its schools. Its evolution may be rougly divided into three main stages: the Boiled Tea, the Whipped Tea, and the Steeped Tea. [...] The Cake-tea which was boiled, the Powdered-tea which was whipped, the Leaf-tea which was steeped, mark the distinct emotional impulses of the Tang, the Sung, and the Ming dynasties of China. If we were inclined to borrow the much-abused terminology of art classification, we might designate them respectively, the Classic, the Romantic, and the Naturalistic schools of Tea.

page 22:

"froth of the liquid jade"

page 22-23: Cake-tea

The leaves were steamed, crushed in a mortar, made into a cake, and boiled together with rice, ginger, salt, orange peel, spices, milk, and sometimes with onions! The custom obtains at the present day among the Thibetans and various Mongolian tribes, who make a curious syrup of these ingredients. [...] Luwuh's Cake-tea is roasted before the fire until it becomes soft like a baby's arm and is shredded into a powder between pieces of fine paper. Salt is put in the first boil, the tea in the second. At the third boil, a dipperful of cold water is poured into the kettle to settle the tea and revive the "youth of the water."

page 24: the leaves

According to Luwuh the best quality of the leaves must have "creases like the leathern boot of Tartar horsement, curl like the dewlap of a mighty bullock, unfold like a mist rising out of a ravine, gleam like a lake touched by a zephyr, and be we and soft like fine earth newly swept by rain."

page 25: tea-ware color

Luwuh considered the blue [ceramics] as the ideal colour for the tea-cup, as it lent additional greenness to the beverage, whereas the white made it look pinkish and distasteful. It was because he used cake-tea. Later on, when the tea-masters of Sung took to the powdered tea, they preferred heavy bowls of blue-blac and dark brown. The Mings, with their steeped tea, rejoiced in light ware of white porcelain.

page 25-26: the water

According to Luwuh, the mountain spring is the best, the river water and the spring water come next in the order of excellence. There are three stages of boiling: the first boil is when the little bubbles like the eye of fishes swim on the surface; the second boil is when the bubbles are like crystal beads rolling in a fountain; the third boil is when the billows surge wildly in the kettle.

page 26-27: drinking Cake-tea

O nectar! The filmy leaflet hung like scaly clouds in a serene sky or floated like water-lilies on emerald streams. It was of such a beverage that Lotung, a Tang poet, wrote: "The first cup moistens my lips and throat, the second cup breaks my loneliness, the third cup searches my barren entrail but to find therein some five thousand volumes of odd ideographs. The fourth cup raisees a slight perspiration,--all the wrong of life passes away through my pores. At the fifth cup I am purified; the sixth cup calls me to the realms of immortals. The seventh cup--ah, but I could take no more! I only feel the breath of cool wind that rises in my sleeves. Where is Horaisan? Let me ride on this sweet breeze and waft away thither."

page 27-28: Whipped-tea

The leaves were ground to fine powder in a small stone mill, and the preparation was whipped in hot water by a delicate whisk made of split bamboo. The new process led to some change in the tea-equipage of Luwuh, as well as the choice of leaves. Salt was discarded forever.

page 28-29: tea-ideal of the Sungs

To the Neo-Confucian mind the cosmic law was not reflected in the phenomenal world, but the phenomenal world was the cosmic law itself. Æons were but moments--Nirvana always whithin grasp. The Taoist conception that immortality lay in the eternal change permeated all their modes of thought. It was the process, not the deed, which was interesting. It was the completing, not the completion, which was really vital. Man came thus at once face to face with nature.The tea began to be not a poetical pastime, but one of the methods of self-realisation.

page 29-30: Tea-ceremony

Among the Buddhists, the southern Zen sect, which incorporated so much of Taoist doctrines, formulated an elaborate ritual of tea. The monks gathered before the image of Bodhi Dharma and drank tea out of a single bowl with the profound formality of a holy sacrament. It was this Zen ritual which finally developed into the Tea-ceremony of Japan in the fifteenth century.

page 30-31: eternal youth

To the latter-day Chinese tea is a delicious beverage, but not an ideal. The long woes of his country have robbed him of the zest for the meaning of life. He has become modern, that is to say, old and disenchanted. He has lost that sublime faith in illusions which constitutes the eternal youth and vigour of the poets and ancients. He is an eclectic and politely accepts the traditions of the universe. He toys with Nature, but does not condescend to conquer or worship her.

page 33: Tea-ceremony, tea philosophy

It is in the Japanese tea ceremony that we see the culmination of tea-ideals. Our successful resistance of the Mongol invasion in 1281 had enabled us to carry on the Sung movement so disastrously cut off in China itself through the nomadic inroad. Tea with us became more than an idealisation of the form of drinking; it is a religion of the art of life. The beverage grew to be an excuse for the worship of purity and refinement, a sacred function at which the host and guest joined to produce for that occasion the utmost beatitude of the mundane. The tea-room was an oasis in the dreary waste of existence where weary travellers could meet to drink from the common spring of art-appreciation. The ceremony was an improvised drama whose plot was woven about the tea, the flowers, and the paintings. Not a colour to disturb the tone of the room, not a sound to mar the rhythm of things, not a gesture to obtrude on the harmony, not a word to break the unity of the surroundings, all movements to be performed simply and naturally--such were the aims of the tea-ceremony. And strangely enough it was often successful. A subtle philosophy lay behind it all. Teaism was Taoism in disguise.

nouns

Luwuh

The first apostle of tea. A poet in the middle of the eight century, Luwuh saw in the Tea-service the same harmony and order which reigned through all things. He forumlated the Code of Tea in the "Chaking" (The Holy Scripture of Tea) and has been worshipped as the tutelary god of the Chinese tea merchants.

"Chaking"

Written by Luwuh, it consists of three volumes and ten chapters. The last chapter is unfortunately lost.

1. the nature of the tea-plant
2. the implements for gathering the leaves
3. the selection of the leaves
4. the eumeration and description of the 24 members of the tea-equipage
5. the method of making tea
6. the vulgarity of the ordinary methods of tea-drinking
7. a historical summary of illustrious tea-drinkers
8. the famous tea plantations of China
9. the possible variations of the tea-service
10. illustrations of the tea-utensials

definitions

decoction

the liquor resulting from concentrating the essence of a substance by heating or boiling, esp. a medicinal preparation made from a plant : a decoction of a root.

• the action or process of extracting the essence of something.

ORIGIN late Middle English : from late Latin decoctio(n-), from decoquere ‘boil down’ (see decoct).

sough

verb: (of the wind in trees, the sea, etc.) make a moaning, whistling, or rushing sound.

noun: a sound of this type.

evanescent

soon passing out of sight, memory, or existence; quickly fading or disappearing : a shimmering evanescent bubble. (Note: Evanescent is a lyrical word for whatever vanishes almost as soon as it appears.)

ORIGIN early 18th cent. (in the sense [almost imperceptible]) : from Latin evanescent- ‘disappearing,’ from the verb evanescere (see evanesce).

Horaisan

An island of immortal and everlasting happiness, also called Horaijima. As a result of the growth of Buddhism, the sacred island was replaced by shumisen, the legendary mountain on which Buddha was believed to have lived. Often the names are used interchangeably. [1]

beatitude

supreme blessedness