SweetPersimmon

For the holidays, I have just put the portable mediation seats on sale at SweetPersimmon.com The price was $49.99, now on sale for $40....

I took the photo above rather in tribute to Michael Kenna. He is one of my favorite photographers.  He first came to my attention about 15...

One of the most difficult things about studying tea is sitting seiza.   As I am getting older, it is getting more difficult for me to sit fo...

Rikyu says: The very heart which wants to enter the Way is the best teacher. Sensei says : Beginning teachers want to teach the heart of...

"After host and guest have expressed their feelings of regret and after the final farewells have been said, the guests depart through...

Certainly I am not a Zen student, I know very little about Zen. But I was on my way to the yoga class at the Dai Bosatsu Zen monastery, and ...

Most of Issoan tea classes are in the evening and students often come right from work or right from fighting traffic to get to the school. ...

In the course of my lessons for chado I had to drive across town after work to get to class. That meant fighting traffic for 45 minutes to ...

One of the most difficult things about chado is sitting seiza for long periods of time. I have written about my struggles with sitting on m...

There are days when I just go into the tea room to sit. Sometimes just for 15 mintues. It is not necessarily zazen meditation, but just as...

In chanoyu, the scroll sets the theme for the tea gathering. It is displayed in the tokonoma, or alcove and is probably the most important ...

Your mom probably told you to do this as a kid. As an adult and a tea student, we know that we cannot depend on anyone else to clean up our...

I am sorry about the delay is posting to the blog. I have had computer troubles, and spent this entire frustrating week working with Dell t...

I really don’t go to tea lessons or tea class at least I don’t call it that. It just seems inadequate to what I am doing. When people ask ...

In many ways I can say that I live to get through this moment. That is, I cannot imagine what will happen next week, nor remember what I ha...

If asked the nature of chanoyu say it’s the sound of wind-blown pines in a black and white painting. Sen Sotan Third-Generation Grand Master...

In preparation for one meeting in a lifetime, I swept and dusted the tea room, unrolled the scroll to hang. I set the kettle to boil, sc...

stone Buddha so serene so good unlike me

I keep a tea set at the office, because when things get stressful, I try to take a fifteen minute break and make myself a bowl of tea. When...

Studying traditional chanoyu takes place in a tatami mat room. The proper way to sit is seiza. To sit in seiza, first kneel on the floor, ...