Dogu, more tea stuff

Dogu is a term for tea making utensils. My husband laughs at me and calls them tea toys. In fact, all you need for chanoyu is chawan (tea bowl), chasen (tea whisk), chakin (wiping cloth), fukusa (purification cloth), chaki (tea container) and chashaku (tea scoop). With these six utensils, you can do chanoyu anywhere.

When I first began to study Chado, there were not many Japanese utensils available. Even if I could afford them, they just were not available to me. I began to look at readily available things that could be used for tea. I still have many of those improvised utensils: a ceramic bowl for kensui, a cookie jar for a cold water container, containers of various sizes and shapes for tea caddies.

It is easy now to get acquisitive with tea utensils. Over the internet you can see lots of dogu for sale and you can spend a lot of money on these things. Collecting can become an obsession. But I recommend students to make purchases with restraint. If you have the six basic utensils, do you need to have one more thing?

A lot of dogu from my collection of utensils have come to me unasked. Some were gifts from my sensei and sempai. Other things passed from someone who knew someone else. Other things have been improvised utensils. I also have some utensils on loan from other teachers.

When making utensil purchases, I usually wait for a while before I purchase something. Usually it is something to help facilitate teaching or to use as an example for students.

One of Rikyu’s 100 poems states that, “Tea should not be an exhibition of what the tea man owns. Instead the sincerity of his heart should be expressed.”