How About A Bowl of Tea?

Austin Ravi Soei Babcock serving tea. Photo: Austin Babcock.

by Austin Ravi Soei Babcock

Before I attended my first zikr gathering, my spiritual practice was making and drinking tea. After graduating university in 1991, I set out to broaden myself not with a backpack in Europe but with a kimono in Kyoto, Japan—the “tea world.” In English, we know of “the Japanese Tea Ceremony;” however, what I discovered in Kyoto was not a mere ceremony, but a deep spiritual practice that transformed my life.

Originally, I thought I would be exploring a Japanese traditional art, or dive into Japan’s mysterious “zen” beauty. Both of these things did happen. I also discovered that tea is made delicious not only by creating a beautiful environment where one’s guest can momentarily relax themselves away from the stresses of the everyday world, but also by the quality of heart in the tea maker. I can taste someone’s heart in their tea. The teachers brought a serious and grounded, yet playful and joyous, feeling into each lesson. I remember thinking, “whatever it is that they have, I want to find that in myself.”

The person with the biggest “tea heart” of them all was the hereditary leader, the “Iemoto-sama” in Japanese or “Grand Tea Master” in English—he could fill the largest conference rooms with his heart. He holds a vision that world peace is possible if enough people share tea (and their tea hearts) with each other, one bowl of tea at a time. Imagine that! Nevertheless, as my time in Kyoto became one year, then two and three years, I saw time and again how wholeheartedly preparing a bowl of tea opened people’s hearts.

Powdered green tea. Photo: Austin Babcock.

Some background information: The leaves of the camellia sinensis tree, or “tea,” is packed with health benefits, and offers a euphoric “pick me up.” Originally in China, tea was one of special items offered with gratitude on the Buddhist altar (alongside fruits, vegetables, rice, etc.). Part of the offering was tea’s ceremonial preparation: using only high-quality utensils, purification of the tea-making utensils before making tea, humility when walking the bowl of tea to the altar, and finally carefully cleaning up the utensils. The placement and handling of the various tea utensils on multi-level lacquer stands was arranged as a “mandala,” or “a map to heaven,” with the purpose of connecting the “heavenly realms” and the “earthly realms.” The complex offering demanded specialized training to master the movements.

Tea, together with its offering ceremony, traveled to Japan in the late 12th century together with Zen Buddhism. Three hundred years later, a Zen monk began to offer ceremonially prepared bowls of tea directly to other people. Japan was in a 100-year-plus civil war, and an entire culture quickly grew around such tea gatherings. On one hand, the preparation and serving of the tea still felt ceremonial, deliberate, and demanded concentration from all participants, and on the other hand, there was also splendid food, sake-wine, and plenty of merriment—this must have been a welcome break from the bloody fighting.

The structure of tea gatherings remains relatively unchanged to this day. In fact, tea gatherings are not unlike dinner parties: one invites a small group of friends, cleans and decorates in anticipation of the event, and also cooks and serves food and drinks. However, tea gatherings adhere to traditional Japanese customs that require study and practice to fully comprehend, even for the Japanese. Although each person will have a different experience, a tea gathering feels like the combination of an elaborate dinner party, a carefully staged performance-art piece, and a group-practice of social graces. Tea study is a wide variety of subjects including making the tea itself, but also: cooking, seasonal words and foods, art history, architecture, gardens, philosophy, spirituality, and morals. Rather than studying a “ceremony,” studying “tea” feels like studying the art of life itself.

Today, millions of Japanese study tea as a life-long pursuit: they submit to a teacher, collect special utensils, build tearooms in their homes, and even travel to tea gatherings. Especially in the city of Kyoto, one still finds a number of businesses and organizations that comprise a literal “tea world:” tea growers, sweet makers, kimono makers, ceramic artists, landscape artists, architects, book publishers, scholars, antique dealers, etc. Outside of Japan, tea has become one of Japan’s main cultural images, and people who have never been to Japan are finding inspiration for their life inside of tearooms.

A tearoom is similar to a traditional Japanese room: raised altar-section for a hanging scroll and flowers off to one side, tatami-mat flooring, sliding paper doors, unfinished wood beams, and earthen-plastered walls. But, a tearoom is generally 9 feet by 9 feet or smaller, and has no flashy finishing details. The most important item in the room is the guest; no superfluous decorations are displayed. Conversation is sparse. All of these things combine during a tea gathering to connect people’s hearts together; we eat a little food, drink a little tea, and emerge from the tearoom feeling physically, mentally and emotionally satisfied.

I attended a school in Kyoto set up by the Grand Tea Master to study his family’s 400-year tradition of tea. Each day was spent both in the classroom for lectures and in the tearoom for practicing the many forms of tea making. In the entrance of the school hung three large Chinese-character calligraphy writings: “doh” (the Way or the Tao), “gaku” (academic study and knowledge) and “jitsu” (realization of the essence). The saying is that study (“gaku”) plus practice (“jitsu”) is the path (“doh”). My classroom time was “gaku” and my tearoom study time was “jitsu”, but there was no class dealing directly with the “doh”, or so I thought.

Believe it or not, making tea is very difficult; it demands hour-long concentration, mindfulness of two or more simultaneous actions, hand-eye coordination, a mindset of spontaneity and resourcefulness, and humility at all times—while maintaining a painful kneeling position on the floor the whole time. I was pushed to the limits of my physical/emotional abilities on many occasions. How I dealt with those times became the “doh”, or the path, for me.

In American sufi circles, Murshida Asha Greer has brought tea practice to numerous sufi camps. Somehow, drinking mindful tea and zikr practice go very well together. With that inspiration, I have served tea within various contexts while living at Lama Foundation, a spiritual community in New Mexico: tea as part of mediation training; tea after morning sit; tea to honor someone’s death; tea as part of a wedding; tea in preparation for Shabbat service; tea to welcome a group’s arrival; tea as a farewell; tea as group prayer; and finally, tea in the middle of a zikr gathering. Ceremonial tea culture is relatively new in America—what may tea drinking become in another 20 years from now?

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Austin Ravi Soei Babcock discovered Japanese culture while attending UCLA in the late 1980s. After graduating, he moved to Kyoto to study the  Urasenke Tradition of Tea full-time in the Midorikai program from 1992-95, where he received permission to teach. He also studied calligraphy and ceramics during this time. Returning to Washington DC in 1996, newly married to a Midorikai classmate, he worked full-time at the Urasenke Washington DC Branch until 2002, and received the tea name “Soei” (meaning abundance) from the Urasenke Grand Master in 2000. Austin has shared tea ceremony at sufi camps and at the Lama Foundation, where he lived from 2003-2008. He will be offering tea ceremony at the Mendocino Family Camp (July 18-25, 2010).