Sitting seiza, the bane of tea students

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, and then rest the buttocks on your heels, with the tops of the feet flat on the floor. The hands are sometimes folded modestly in the lap and sometimes placed palm down on the upper thighs with the fingers close together. The back is kept straight, though not unnaturally stiff. Traditionally, women sit with the knees one fist width apart, while men sit with two fist widths of distance between the knees. The big toes may rest side by side or are sometimes overlapped. Some martial arts, notably kendo and iaido also use seiza position and also can be used for sitting meditation or zazen.

While practice, exercises and experience make it more comfortable to move around in the Tea room sitting seiza, for long periods of time, can be quite painful or your feet fall completely asleep and become dead weights making it difficult and dangerous to get up and walk.

At first for me, it was hard to pay attention to anything else while my feet and legs were screaming at me in pain. I tried sitting in the bathtub with warm water. I tried stretching exercises, holding my breath and many other techniques to get the pain to stop. One day I asked my sempai (a senior student), who could sit for days without apparent pain, “When will the pain in my legs go away?” He told me that the pain never goes away, but after a while you won’t mind it so much. After a very long time of thinking hard about this, I became aware that in resisting the pain in my legs, I was filling my mind up with the struggle to resist the pain. That left little room in my mind to pay attention to what was going on in the Tea room. More and more, I am able to “not mind the pain so much” and to notice a lot more of what is going on around me.

For those who want to sit in seiza, but find the pressure too much on feet and ankles, I developed a little, portable meditation seat. It comes in a compact carrying case that doubles as a seat cushion. You can find it here at SweetPersimmon.com.

Tea Ceremony, not just for Geisha

In America, there is the stereotype and fantasy of geisha girls making tea for men. But in the beginning, women were not allowed to practice the tea ceremony. In this 400 year old tradition, it wasn’t until a hundred years ago that women were allowed to study and participate in tea ceremonies. At one point, samurai were expected to study yin pursuits such as tea ceremony and flower arranging to balance the yang pursuits of sword practice and calligraphy. Even now, most of the highest ranking tea masters and teachers are men.

During my tea training, I have had both men and women for sensei and I have always studied with a mix of men and women. I feel lucky in this regard because the energy in a tea room with men is different. While the training is the same for men and women, there are subtle differences in how men sit, stand, walk and move in the tea room. Unlikely as it seems, tea is a physical pursuit, and a few adaptations to procedures have been made to allow women to study.

When I was in Kyoto, whenever we went to formal tea gatherings at the grand tea master’s house, we were always served by the men – tea masters in training. It is quite an experience to see a man in kimono, like the grand tea master, conduct a tea ceremony. It’s the combination of strength, skill and gracefulness and yes, it is quite attractive.

Give those with whom you find yourself every consideration

The role of the host and the guest in tea are clearly defined. That the host will give his guests every consideration is a given, but also the guest must give his host the same thing. That is why the guest role is taught as seriously as the host role when learning the way of tea. This teaching of Rikyu goes beyond the host and the guest in the tea room. He says to give those with whom you find yourself. No matter where you go and what you do, those with whom you find yourself you must give them every consideration. It is very much the golden rule – treat others as you would be treated yourself.

Easy to say, hard to do. With the modern technology it is so easy to ignore those with whom we find ourselves. How many times have I interrupted someone I was with and taken a mobile phone call and ignored the person in front of me? What about at an unavoidable meeting with people I barely know or don’t particularly like? How we treat other people is a measure of how we view ourselves.

“First you must make a delicious bowl of tea; lay the charcoal so the water boils; arrange the flowers as they are in the field; in the summer suggest coolness, in the winter, warmth; do everything ahead of time; prepare for rain; and give those with whom you find yourself every consideration.” If you can do these well then surely the great tea master Rikyu would become your student. These teachings are just as relevant today in the modern world as they were in the 16^th century tea room and we can put them to practice in our daily lives.

Prepare for rain

Living in the Pacific Northwest, this teaching surely applies to us. It rains often and you never know when nice weather will turn to rain. I keep a waterproof raincoat in the car, just in case I get caught out in the rain.

Just as in a tea gathering, the host must prepare for rain with special rain clogs and umbrellas for the guests as well as something to entertain them if they cannot go outside during the break.

At another level, the tea gathering is a complex event and you cannot plan for every single disaster that may or may not happen. Tea training teaches us be flexible if what you have planned goes awry. Preparation in this case is training yourself to deal with whatever comes up. One extra guest shows up? Divide the food so there is enough. Tea spills on the tatami mat? Wipe it up and go on. To be prepared is to respond in an appropriate way as the situation presents itself.

Do everything ahead of time

Of a certainty, if we are putting on an event like a tea gathering, there are preparations to do ahead of time. If things are not done ahead of time, they must be done during the event and that often takes more time. If we are rushing around trying to make up for lost time, it is difficult to be present and enjoy the moment.

Procrastination only makes us run faster and take longer on the back end. We cannot catch up wasted time, it is gone forever. Time is the one commodity that there will never be more of so this teaching of Rikyu encourages us not to waste it.