UNCLE HAYTO'S TEA TALES

The Ten Virtues of Cha

According to tradition, Myōei Shonin[1]of Toga-no-ō received some tea plants from Eisai Shōnin[2] and planted them there. To this day, both connoisseurs of tea and devotees of sadō (the Way of Tea) consider this tea to be the absolute best, largely because Shonin himself used it. He once wrote down what he considered to the, as he called them, the Ten Virtues of Tea:

1. Has the blessing of all the Gods.
2. Promotes filial piety.
3. Drives away the Devil.
4. Drives away drowsiness.
5. Keeps the Five Viscera[3] in harmony.
6. Fights off disease.
7. Strengthens friendships.
8. Disciplines the mind and body.
9. Calms the passions.
10. Gives a peaceful death.
[1] Myōei Shonin is credited with being the first actual tea manufacture in Japan.
[2] Eisai (1141 – 1215) was a Zen Buddhist monk. A bit of a renegade of the Tendai Buddhist School, he took up the Rinzai school of Zen and after studying in China, brought the discipline to Kyoto and Kyushu. This drew heavy criticism from the Tendai leaders and Eisai found himself charged with heresy. In 1199 he fled to Kamakura were Hōjō Masako took him under his protection and made him abbot of Kennin-ji Temple.
[3] The internal organs in a human body can be classified into five viscera organs (Wu Zang) and six bowel organs (Liu Fu). The five zang organs are: heart, liver, spleen, lungs and kidneys. The six fu organs are: stomach, small intestine, large intestine, gallbladder, urinary bladder and Triple Energizer (San Jiao).

UNCLE HAYATO'S TEA TALES

Morata Shuko,
Founder Of The Tea Ceremony

Shuko’s real name was Murata Mōkichi and he was the son of Moku-ichi Kenko of Nara. Even as a young man he had a taste for, if not an appreciation of, tea and an obsession with gambling at tocha, tea-tasting tournaments. Shuko, with a number of his friends and other delinquents, would gather at some nearby inn or roadhouse where they would hold impromptu parties and drink large amounts of tea, competing to see who could identify the “true” tea from Uji, a village on the southern outskirts of Kyoto, and which was not. These parties were often wild, decadent affairs where large sums of money or lavish prizes would go to the winners. Needless to say, this was not what his family had intended for him.

His addiction to tocha eventually was so out of hand that his family sent him away to the priesthood at the Shōmei-ji monastery where he lived for almost ten years. But being that he was young and lazy, he was eventually expelled from the temple. From there he journeyed to Kyoto where he entered the Daitoku-ji at Murasakino, where he studied under Ikkyu Sōjun[i]. His one great fault was that he would always fall asleep in the daytime (as well as nighttime) to the detriment of his studies and the amusement of his fellow students. Some clever fellow even went so far as to remark that if his teacher was Ikkyu (one slumber) then the Shuko should be called Hyakkyu (a hundred slumbers).

That he was a source of entertainment to his fellows and that his studies were indeed suffering did not go unnoticed by Shuko. He went so far as to go to a doctor to ask for a prescription to keep him awake so that he could study. The doctor, after listening to Shuko’s sad tale, suggested that tea was the best stimulant for the mind and told the hapless student to drink lots of it - and often. He took up drinking the tea of Toga-no-ō[ii] and found it very effective indeed. Soon he was not only drinking the tea by himself but whenever anyone came to see him he would offer them some as well, accompanied by considerable ceremony.

By some way or means, the Shōgun, Ashikaga Yoshimasa, heard of this and took an immediate interest; in fact, he was so interested that he summoned Shuko to the palace and ordered him to arrange a ceremony for drinking tea. Assisted by two friends, Nō-ami[iii] and Sō-ami[iv], Shuko compared the tea etiquettes already in use and selected parts from several to use. Yoshimasa was quite pleased by the young man’s efforts. He instructed Shuko to give up the monastic life and to build a hut for himself near Sanjo. The Shōgun also gave him a plaque, written in his own hand to be placed over the gate, which read Shu-kō-an-shu or “Pearl-Bright-Cell-Master.”

From then on, Shuko devoted himself only to the arts of cooking special meals, eating them, infusing tea and of course drinking it. He also took to entertaining his friends with these special meals, and of course preparing tea. In time at such gatherings, he and his friends started to entertain themselves by composing and reciting Japanese verses. Anyone who was anyone competed for the honor of his friendship and thus, cha or tea, began to increase in popularity.

Shuko was the first in Japan to whom the title of Tea Master was ever given. He died and the ripe age of eighty-one on the fifteenth of May in 1503 and was buried at the Shinju-an of the temple of Diatoku-ji at Murasakino in Kyoto, where he had been a student. To say that he was sorely missed would be an understatement; for after his departure, it did not take long for his friends and associates to realize that the quality of his “tea meetings” did not stem from the utensils he used or the pictures and writings on the walls but instead came directly from him and that, could never be replaced.

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[i] Ikkyu Sōjun (1394-1481) was an eccentric, nonconformist Japanese Zen Buddhist priest and poet. He had a great impact on the infusion of Japanese art and literature with Zen attitudes and ideals. He also had a strong influence on the development of the formal Japanese tea ceremony.
[ii] Toga-no-ō was the first place that tea was grown in Kyoto, which was designated as real tea verses the other places where it was grown in Japan. Yosai brought tea seeds and the processing technique from China along with Renzai Zen in about 1192 A.D. He gave some seeds to his disciples who planted them at Toga no O, at his temple Kozan-ji. Thus, Toga no O is considered the starting place for tea, followed by Uji.)
[iii] Nō-ami (Nakao Shinnō) (1397 – 1494) was a poet, painter, art critic, and the first non-priest who painted in the suiboku (water-ink) style of the Chinese. He was also the grandfather of Sō-ami.
[iv] Sō-ami (1472 – 1525) was a true renaissance man of the Muromachi Period of Japanese history. He was a painter, art critic, pot, landscape gardener, and master of the tea ceremony, incense ceremony and flower arrangement, and a leading figure in the development of Japanese aesthetics.

Copyright 2009 by Hayato Tokugawa and Shisei-Do Publications. All rights reserved.

THOUGHTS FROM A TAKAYAMA ROOFTOP - A NEW CAPITALISM?

IS IT TIME FOR A NEW CAPITALISM?

I cannot help but wonder if the current global (and it truly is global) financial crisis is an opening for building a new form of capitalism that is based on sound values?

It would seem to me that capitalism, which was based on financial speculation, was in essence an immoral system that misused and distorted the logic of free enterprise and entrepreneurship. My own feeling is that capitalism needs to find a new moral values (based on something more than the maximum short-term profit) and that we must be willing to acknowledge a stronger role for government, particularly in a regulatory and “watchdog” capacity.

In the United States, many people including myself were surprised at how quickly politicians from both the Republican and the Democratic Party were willing to bail out banks and insurance companies when they began to go under. Very few of those in a position of power were willing to take the risk of letting the banks collapse due to their own mismanagement, misjudgment, and excesses of their management. One cannot really know what the consequences could have been. The choice to save the banks from the consequences of their own errors indicates a shift in values, away from the alleged wisdom of the market. There were so many who said not to worry, that the market was not the economy, but it would seem that such was not necessarily the case. The market was the American economy and they got it very wrong, particularly in matters of financial securities. They got it terribly wrong.

Will the downturn produce a deeper shift in the values of consumers? Some experts have seen the global financial crisis as an evolutionary necessity, in fact, desirable, specifically because it is producing such a change. The hope of those experts is that the trend will now be to put family ahead of work. Certainly this is something very much needed in the United States where for example, workers have fewer holidays than those in any other industrialized nation, and certainly Japan must also be considered, based on the number of hours the average Japanese worker must spend on the job each day, despite many more holidays. The French on the other hand, have already had shorter working days, shorter workweeks, and longer vacations in place for a very long time, and have been the major focus of criticism by American business management.

Americans especially, have a tendency to scoff at the French, yet France may indeed be a good model to follow. The French have for a very long time tended to be less inclined to go into debt. When they pay with “plastic”, they are inclined more to use debit cards, thus drawing on money they already have, rather than credit cards. We can now better appreciate the realities of not spending money we don’t have.

Excess is out of style, meaning that there is currently less luxury spending. There are cutbacks on the retail sale of luxury goods everywhere, even the large department stores of London, New York, and Tokyo. Cartier reports that it is facing its toughest market condones in 20 years. One cannot help but wonder, however, if this change marks a permanent trend in values or merely a temporary reduction forced on consumers by investment and income losses as well as continued economic uncertainty.

President Obama said in his inaugural address that, “The time has come to set aside childish things”. We must choose the noble idea that “all are equal, all are free, and all people deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.” He may be right. It is time for the world to restore some proper sense of what is truly important.

Do we, particularly in the United States and Japan, buy luxury items more because of the status they bring rather than because of their intrinsic value? I think so. Could the current crisis serve to help us appreciate that there are indeed more things that are more central to our happiness than our ability to spend money on Rolex, fashions and fine dining? As a Buddhist, I cannot help but wonder if we cannot take it one step further and become more aware and more active in seeing to the needs of those who live in real poverty and thus are far worse off than we will ever be.

I see a danger however in that the possibility for real change will be corrupted, as has happened to the environmental movement. “We’ve gone green” has become an advertising catch phrase with no real value behind it. Will greed utilize the crisis as another opportunity to make money? If you look and listen closely, you will see that there are already steps in that direction by big and small businesses alike.

It gives one pause to think.