ooops, no computer now

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 to no avail. I will have to replace the computer, so until then, I may be sporadic in my posting.

This is to let you know that I have met with a few people here in town and now you can get SweetPersimmon.com products at:

Dai Ichi International Travel
925 NW Lovejoy St
Portland, OR 97209
(503) 228-1118

They have a little gift shop area and have let me put a few things there for sale. If you are in the Portland area, stop by and save on shipping charges for the Portable Meditation Seat, Insulated Tea Infuser Travel Mug, Premium Incense from Shoyeido, and photo cards taken from around Portland.

Being without a computer has made me aware how much I am dependent on technology. It has become an essential way for me to keep in touch with my friends, conduct business, and work out my family schedules. I have felt rather at a loss being unplugged for 6 days.

I have used the telephone more, scheduled more face to face meetings and generally been more available to my husband because I am not on the computer. I realize how much out of human touch I have been and it is a great lesson to me. Even though email and posting is a fast convenient way for me to communicate, it is also less personal. I also noticed how much more time I have to get things done. Being on the computer is a big time waster for me.

I am rather glad that I have had this time to be unplugged and more in touch with the people around me.

Form – the kata

In most martial arts there is what is called the kata, a series of exercises that a student memorizes and copies exactly what the sensei teaches. The same is true for tea. Through 400 years of refinement tea procedures have developed for beauty, efficiency and economy of motion. Through the repeated exercise of following the kata, the form, the student develops body memory.

I can see this with my intermediate students. They will be in the middle of a tea procedure and forget what the next move needs to be, but the body already knows and unconsciously it will start to make the next move. The mind that hasn’t caught up with the body and will stop the movement and student becomes even more confused.

Practicing the kata helps with body awareness. Many students of tea in America get impatient with learing the kata. If they have done something once or twice they think that they have learned it. Perhaps intellectually they have the basics, but the body needs to do it at least 30 times. Doing something once or twice will not give your body enough time to know precisely what it needs to do.

Once students have learned the correct form, there is constant training to maintain it without getting sloppy. Paying attention to what your body, hands, head, feet, knees are doing while making tea is not easy. For example, my sensei used to say while making tea that your attention should be on your non-working hand. What is it doing? Where is it supposed to be? Is there tension there? Is it ready to do the next thing? All this while you are moving through the procedure of making tea at the same time.

There are those who see chado as a rigid set of rules to follow, who see the kata as stifling creativity and sponteneity. But there is tremendous freedom within the structure of the kata to explore and learn from its potential. Following the kata, self-consciousness is conquered and the true self is uncovered. It is a self that marks the kata with its own inimitable qualities. As sensei says, “When we have so thorougly learned the kata it moves beyond to your katachi.”

Sitting Seiza in Comfort

I just got an email from a person who ordered a Portable Meditation Seat from my online store:

I suppose it wasn't the best planning in the world to take a six-hour hike up and around Tiger Mountain the day before my tea class. My teacher could clearly see that I was hurting as my 60-plus year-old knees winced in pain as the class wore on.

At a break in the lesson he handed me a small package wrapped in an attractive green cloth. Opening it I found pain relief in the shape of three pieces of wood, one of Sweet Persimmon's seiza stools.

I'd purchased a similar stool years ago in Japan but it never gave me any relief. Its dimensions were wrong for my Western frame but the Sweet Persimmon one was perfect! It took me five seconds to assemble the seat and another five to tie the padded fabric to it and thus give me some extra (and welcome) padding.

The rest of the class was a joy as I was able to give my full attention to my instructor. And, because the way the stool is built, you would have to look hard to realize I wasn't sitting in full seiza position.

Needless to say, that night I ordered my own! It's been great to have in class and, even though I have a class tomorrow, I think I'll tackle Mt. Catherine today . . .

A grateful tea student

You can order your Portable Meditation seat from SweetPersimmon.com and sit in comfort, too.

I go to keiko every week

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 where I go every week after work, I tell them I am going keiko. Keiko in Japanese means training or practice or to learn or involve oneself. The next thing that they ask is after 25 years what are you training or practicing for?

Going to keiko is not necessarily practice for doing a chaji (tea gathering) nor is it necessarily for advancing to the next certificate level nor for keeping in shape, though there is nothing like training your legs for sitting seiza through a 4 hour chaji. Going every week to keiko isn’t really to get to some end result, complete a study, or train for a big event.

Even if I go to keiko and just clean the tatami or wash and put utensils away, it is still as meaningful as if I went through the whole ritual of preparing and serving tea. There is just something so satisfying about going to keiko. No matter how hard it is to get myself to class, to prepare for tea, to go through the hassle of putting on layer after layer of kimono, every week I come away exhausted but nourished. It feeds and fills some place in me that makes it worth while. I feel inspired and energized and ready to face the week ahead.

Enough Already

You can go to any fast food restaurant today and “Supersize” your order. For a little more money you can get twice as much food. Marketing calls it Value. As if we needed a half pound of hamburger, two potatoes of french fries and 64 oz of drink for our midday meal. American culture today makes it so difficult to say “I am satisfied, I have enough.” People look at you funny and ask what is wrong with you. We think we need to have a bigger house, fancier car, the latest gadgets. Consumers are what drive the economy. People are working longer hours, looking for the next promotion in order to satisfy the financial obligations of buying on credit for more electronics, more clothes, more exotic vacations. We are exhorted daily with messages to have more, do more, be more, more, more.

Some of us may get layed off from our job or have health problems that halt the headlong pursuit of having more. But such events rarely allow people to appreciate their circumstances. But what happens to those who step off this acquisition merry-go-round? I read a news story the other day about a high-powered executive that quit his job to spend more time with his family. None of his co-workers believed that he made the decision to do it. They thought it was a polite way of saying he was fired. Choosing a simpler lifestyle not easy. How can we get to a place where we can say that we have enough, we are satisfied?

Lessons from Chado the Way of Tea

According to D.T. Suzuki, who introduced Zen Buddhism and Japanese culture to the West:

“… to understand Japanese culture is to understand the desire not to be dependent on things worldly – wealth, power and reputation – and yet to feel inwardly the presence of something of the highest value, above time and social position.” (from Zen and Japanese Culture)

Rikyu, who codified Tea as we know it today, left many sayings about how much is enough:

“There is shelter enough if it keeps the rain off, and food enough when it staves off hunger. We draw water, gather firewood, boil the water and make tea.” (from the Nampuroku)

“Tea should not be an exhibition of what the tea man owns. Instead the sincerity of his heart should be expressed.” (from Rikyu’s 100 poems)

Not everyone can take these lessons from Chado and put them into practice in their own everyday life, but we can strive for them as we study Tea and the Way. Little by little, in my own study, I have understood more about what Rikyu was talking about.

While I was living in Japan, I stayed in a small Japanese room that was my living room, bedroom, study and dressing room. My actual living space became smaller and smaller as I acquired things. My choices often came down to “can I live without it?” rather than “do I want it?” Returning back home after living with absolute essentials for a year, I wanted to clean out my house and get rid of so many things that were cluttering up my space.

So the lifestyle question for me is not “can I fill up the empty spaces?” but “what can I eliminate and still be satisfied?” It is like sculpting a life. What can I remove to reveal the art within rather than add something more to clutter and obscure it. Removing many of the things that distract us, allows time for reflection on what are our deepest values are so that we may consciously live a life of meaning according to those values.

Also, by getting rid extraneous things, I was amazed at how unburdened I felt. Ownership implies that I have taken responsibility for it: finding a place for it, caring for it, storing it, keeping it in good working order. I did not notice when I was acquiring things how each thing weighed me down a little more until I was mentally dragging it all around with me.

Another aspect of having enough is being thankful for what we already have. It may sound trite, but getting up every morning and being thankful for the life we have seems to make the desire for more less strident. And there are many things to be thankful for: good health, family, and friends, to name a few. Especially after the September 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington, we ought to look right here now and appreciate our lives as they are before we think about the future, knowing that at any random time, our lives can be changed forever.

The Japanese kanji for contentment is made up of two characters: chi soku, literally to know sufficiency. Nobody can tell us how much is enough. If we rely on external sources to tell us, there will never be enough. There will always be something more that we do not have. Only we know what it is in our lives to know sufficiency. It comes from inside us. It comes from appreciating what we already have, from knowing what is really important to us, and deciding what we can live without.