My First Chakai

I'd like to introduce to you a guest blogger, Stephanie.  She is a student and has been studying for more than 2 1/2 years.  Earlier this year, she put on her first chakai:

Earlier this year I hosted my first chakai (tea gathering) for a fellow student who was returning to Japan. It was fitting that she be shokyakyu (first guest) and I teishu (host) since we had studied together for several months. My senpai (senior students) helped me plan and even agreed to be hanto (serving the tea in the tea room) and mizuya-cho (preparing everything outside of the tea room). One of my senpai painted the artistic work on the front of the invitation! I am so fortunate that Margie sensei encourages us to host chakai and for generous senpai!

 

Margie Sensei and Honored Guest

One of the best things about planning a chakai is that it's an integrative learning experience. It allowed me to take the individual learnings from my lessons and bring them together in a whole. Part of the learning, for me, was figuring out what needed to be done and when. For example, I needed to decide upon the guest list; select a theme; make and send the invitations; purchase fresh tea, whisk and chakin (linen cloth for purification); select the utensils and appropriate poetic names; write up the kaiki (a list of the utensils with names); decide upon and make/procure sweets and much more.

 

Tea Bowl Name: Haru Gasumi, Spring Mist, named by First Guest

I also wanted to honor my friend and teachers by doing my best at making tea and so I practiced the temae (tea procedure) many times at home, until I could more or less complete it without egregious error. I aspired to a place of familiarity so that I could also speak during the tea-making. This can be a challenge, but an important one as much of the theme is revealed through the stories told. I believe that practice is always a worthy path and it has paid off for me in multiples, as my comfort with the basic procedure has grown tremendously through the experience.

The day of the chakai, my senpai and I arrived early. They were so wonderful, I can't say thanks enough! They helped me clean, wipe the tatami, hang the scroll, arrange the flowers, set up the utensils, etc. We even had time for a dry run which helped me feel much more at ease. One of my senpai dressed me in kimono (so that it would go faster than my 2.5 hour process!), and then the guests arrived. 

 

Stephanie (host, center) and Senpai

From this point onward, things unfolded in their natural order and I believe the experience was meaningful to everyone involved. My hands shook visibly as I placed the chashaku (tea scoop) onto the natsume (tea container) and I forgot to open the lid to the mizusashi (cold water jar) at the right time, among numerous other minor blunders. Margie sensei had trained me well to make my mistakes as beautifully as possible and carry on. My heart was filled with warmth to honor my friend and the other guests. The tea was made and served, the stories were told and the conversations were lovely, making for a once-in-a-lifetime tea gathering.

Competency in the tea room

Some of my newer students are learning a new temae or procedure for making tea.   One of them said that we haven't spent enough time on it for her to feel competent.  She only did it a few times before we changed to the Ro season and now she feels like she has to start all over again.

Here is the news:  we all feel like we have to start all over again.  In fact, for those of us who have practiced for 25 years and more, we want to get back to the place where we feel like beginners again. Rikyu's poem says, "Learn from one to ten and then return to the original one again."  The change of the seasons reminds us to pay attention to what we are doing. 

Feeling competent in the tea room can lead to feeling complacent -- to phone it in because we know what to do.  My sempai said that as a host, the act of making tea is brand new every single time you do it.  To have the freshness, anticipation and excitement of doing something as if for the very first time, makes it fresh and new for the guests, too.

With the many variations in temae, depending on the guests, the utensils, the seasons, the time, the place, there are literally millions of ways to perform the ceremony.  Who can remember and do each one perfectly?  Does doing the temae perfectly mean you are competent?  Can you do a competent temae without doing it perfectly? 

Can we this apply to real life outside the tea room? There are no instructions for life, so how do you judge how competent you are doing your life?  Do you get to practice life until you feel competent?

Okeiko guidelines

As we change to the furo season it is always good to be reminded of okeiko guidelines.  Yes, I do remember going over these when I first started tea class, but  here they are again:

For every class:

• Remove shoes and put on white socks. Put your shoes away neatly in the shoe cupboard or line them up under the shoe bench.
• Store your bags and other things in the place provided.
• Use tsukubai or wash hands first. Bring your own handkerchief to wipe your hands.
• Always bring your fukusabasami with fukusa, fan, and kaishi.
• When entering the tea room, enter on your knees unless carrying something.
• Always look at the scroll and the flower arrangement when entering the tea room for the first time.
• Sit quietly until the sensei enters the room.
• All classes start and end with aisatsu

During class time:

• Always clean up after yourself. Wash your bowl, chakin, whisk, and put away. Help with clean up after class and to do the mizuya work, unless the mizuya cho dismisses you.
• The mizuya cho is in charge of the mizuya. You will follow instructions without argument. If there is a dispute, call a meeting with the cho after class.
• Watch senior students and learn from them; from temae to tea room behavior to clean up chores. If you don’t know how to do something, ASK.
• Never pass any tea utensils hand to hand. Put it down in front of the other person and let them pick it up.
• Don’t take notes in the tea room. Wait until after you leave the room to write anything down. Train your mind to remember.
• Wait until an appropriate time to ask questions. Distracting the teacher takes away from fellow students teaching and you would want the sensei’s attention on you for your lesson.
• No teaching commentary from the side. There is only one teacher in the room. Respect the sensei to teach what is necessary.
• Sitting seiza can be painful. Ask for a cushion, or stool. Changing position is helpful, but don’t make a production of it. Don’t get up and walk if your feet are numb.
• Try not to call too much attention to yourself in the tea room. The sensei notices everything.
• Working together is necessary for tea to work. Cooperation is valued.
• Read, research, look things up on your own. There is the library and books and the internet. You are in charge of your learning and it is not up to the teacher to make sure you progress.
• Everyone is your teacher. You can learn something from everybody.

Training in chado is hard and we must study and train diligently.  It is also a good reminder for me.

The right way

"One learns by looking and studying.  Without understanding completely, one cannot criticize."  ~ from the 100 poems of Rikyu


We just had an intensive workshop here in Portland with Christy-sensei.  It is always inspiring and somewhat intimidating.   The format is one after another, students make tea for sensei and we often go from the very beginning procedures to the very highest in the space of about 3 days.  Or maybe in the reverse order, depending on the schedule. We all were studying our notes before she arrived, and sitting seiza at night watching TV to build up our strength for those 12 hour days sitting seiza.

We always have warigeiko, that is, back to the basics of folding the fukusa and purifying the utensils.  I always learn so much from this, even though I have been doing tea for many years.  Christy said that when the Gyotei came to San Francisco and he was teaching warigeiko, all he did was talk about posture.  Those finer points, points I knew and have forgotten, or have gotten sloppy at wore gone over and I retrained my body again.  Christy is so very good at giving honest feedback on form. That is also why tea cannot be learned from a book or by yourself with videos.   You need a teacher who can look at you and correct your form, placement, posture, and speed.  You need a teacher who will tell you to stop and take a breath.   A teacher will also tell you straighten your back or keep your focus on your non-working hand.

When I was in Japan, some teachers didn't teach as actively as teachers here in America.  One only watched you as you went through your temae and said not a word.  If you forgot or got lost, he just looked at you and it was up to you to struggle through to the end.  Another one would tell me that I was not doing it right, but did not tell me how to correct it, I had to figure it out. Boy those were some hard lessons, and yes, I do remember them much more vividly than if the teacher had just prompted and corrected me at the time.

I had a teacher who once said that the presence of the teacher is more important than the teaching itself. If  a student really wanted to learn the way of tea, they had to steal the knowledge.  By watching and paying attention was how one learned.

In America, sometimes students will question the teacher, especially if they have had other teachers in how to do a procedure. (or more recently saw something on video or Youtube)  My sempai taught me (rather severely) that whoever is teaching at the time is the right way to do it.   I have note books with notations (Christy sensei teaches this way, but Minako sensei teaches this way).  Even if the same teacher teaches something a little differently at a different time, it is still correct at the time the sensei is teaching.  

This is very hard for some people to grasp.  If there is a right way to do it, they want to know it and they want to know it will always be consistently right.   In Chado there is a right way to do things and we must learn it.  But there will always be some ambiguity in oral teaching and we must make the best of it as we can.  When we have the experience and understanding to judge, we can decide what is right for us.  Until then, the sensei teaching at the time is always right.   Just say "hai."

Chabako and flower viewing

The students are currently studying chabako (traveling tea box) in preparation for Hanami,or flower viewing. This month the Sakura or cherry blossoms will be blooming and for the Japanese people, this is one of the events of the year. We will take our chabako and thermos and venture outside to prepare tea under the cherry blossoms. Portland has a fine waterfront park dedicated to the Japanese interment and it is lined with Sakura that are just in bloom now. We can do it at the peak, or we can do it when the petals start coming down like pink snow all around us.

I remember the first week I was in Kyoto my sempai invited us new students to a chakai at the Kyoto botanical gardens. They packed up the chabako, thermos and bento and we walked from our dormitory to the gardens. It was a beautiful sunny spring day. Under the cherry blossoms, they prepared tea for us and told us how it was to be students and the headquarters under the grand tea master. They were so helpful and took great care of us those first six months when everything was brand new. Thank you, Herman, Kirsten, Scott, Maya, Jani, Robert, and Nastya. It was a wonderful year thanks to you.

Self discipline and tea studies

One of the great lessons that I learned during my 25 years of tea studies is the importance of self-discipline. I think it is one of those grown up values that don’t seem to be emphasized much anymore. I used to think of self-discipline as punishment; feeling guilty for not doing the things I should be doing and denying myself the pleasures of life.

When it came to tea studies in the beginning, I was not a particularly good student. I wouldn’t practice between classes, my sensei would scold me during class for my wandering mind, I would be late for class and I would always be asking questions even when sensei just finished explaining the very thing I was asking (I was not paying attention). As a consequence, I didn’t progress very far.

Sensei said to me one day, that it didn’t matter to her whether I progressed or not. I was paying her to teach me, but I had to meet her half-way in my learning. It wasn’t until I was clear that I wanted to study tea, that I became focused on what I was doing every week. I began to think about class after I went home and before the next one. I became diligent about choosing a poetic name for my chashaku every week. The funny thing was that when I became a better student, sensei was much more strict with me. I had to work even harder than when I was a lazy student.

When I went to Japan, one of my sensei there told us that we were sitting on a mountain of jewels, but we’d have to dig them out ourselves. It was not the teacher’s job to see that I had a good experience for the year we were there. This was the hard lesson for me. When I rebelled or was lazy or didn’t do what I was supposed to do or be where I was supposed to be, it just got harder for me. When I applied myself, all kinds of special things came my way. They were training me.

There were some students who were very good at looking good. They would appear to be busy while sensei was looking, and then do nothing if he wasn’t. For the first half year, I would often complain to one of my sempai about things that upset me or that I thought were unfair. She would nod her head wisely at all of my complaints and say, “Yes, it is good training for you.” When I could control my reactions to other people or what was going around me, I had a much better experience. I knew what I had to do and just doing it became satisfaction enough.

Sensei says, “Do the right thing because it is the right thing to do.”

On receiving teaching

In my study of Chado, I have had some very strict sensei. They would watch me make tea and pick apart everything from how I wore my kimono to the speed or slowness of my movements. They insisted that I sit properly in seiza even when my legs and feet were screaming at me for movement. I almost quit tea lessons a hundred times. Yet I came back for more. There was definitely something that drew me back again each time I got discouraged.

I have a friend who is a Zen priest. When she began to study chado, she learned everything very quickly. She told me, if you truly want to learn the Way, you have to steal the knowledge, sensei don’t just give it to you for free. Another sempai told me that the way of tea is filled with jewels, but you have to dig them out yourself.

It wasn’t until I went to Japan to study that I finally appreciated how strict my sensei were. I complained regularly to my sempai about how tough the teachers were on me. Often they were stricter with me than any other student, and I would get flustered and angry. Why were they being so unfair with me? Finally, after listening to me for months, he said, “Don’t you get it? It takes a lot more effort for teahcers to be strict with their students. The strictness you see as picking on you is really them showing you how much they care about you. They want you to do well and will spend the time to correct you. So next time you get a correction, just say ‘hai’, or even better say ‘thank you’”.

Gratitude for my sempai

In Japanese, sempai is the word for senior students. Kohai is the word for junior students. For many people who have not grown up with the sempai-kohai system it can be difficult to understand and for the system to work, it must have the cooperation of both the kohai and the sempai.

The sempai as a senior student has many responsibilities: to act as an example of the teaching of the sensei, to be the source for etiquette questions, to teach the kohai the behavior and procedures in the preparation room, and any other teaching out of sight of the sensei. If the kohai misbehave or make mistakes, it is the sempai who takes responsibility and is the one that gets in trouble.

The responsibilities of the kohai are to respect the sempai, to be humble and defer to the sempai, to ask the questions before attempting anything he hasn’t done before and accept the teachings.

A hard concept for me was to accept someone younger than I as my sempai. As we enter the way of tea, everyone who has been before you is your sempai, no matter how young and how inexperienced. I had 15 years of experience studying with my sensei when I went to study in Kyoto. Though I did have sempai that were wise and more experienced, some of my sempai were 18 or 19, had studied for less than a year and they had been in the program for six months before I came. They were still my sempai and though I might have known how to conduct myself at home, they still had more experience in the protocol and how to conduct themselves in Japan than I did and had a lot to teach me.

The lesson I learned from this is that everyone has something to teach me, even those younger and less experienced. To all of my sempai in the way of tea, thank you. Thank you very much for showing me the way.