As far as I can remember my first exposure to Japanese culture was in my parent’s home. Not that I ever noticed much interest in oriental arts from them, but amongst their collection of nick-nacks there was a shelf on which lived a small collection of Japanese and Chinese objects. My father also obsessively cleaned two white Chinese porcelain figures that were on the mantle piece. These were dusted religiously to the point that he was always gluing the broken fingers back on to them. To this day I still have them, glued fingers and all, on my mantel.
The shelves contents included an oddly shaped colorful Chinese spoon and a bamboo figurine that depicted a cormorant fisherman in Japan. It took me years to figure out what these characters were actually up to. There were several other objects, but in a house with very few books this collection occupied a large part of my imagination. All the other nick-nacks had familiar shapes and decoration but not these. They were a kind of puzzle to me.
Many years went by. I attended Catholic grade school and two years of Catholic high school. There was no mention of oriental culture in either of their curriculums. But, despite our best efforts to keep the high school open it closed and I attended the local public high school. There I was exposed to, lets just say, more alternative thoughts, read my first book, Catcher in the Rye and somehow was introduced to the British author Alan Watts. Through him I discovered Zen Buddhism. After devouring all of his works I felt I needed a more direct connection. This led me to a study of Chinese poetry, D.T. Suzuki, R.H. Blyth and the work of the haiku poets. I even tired my hand at writing haiku; those 16 syllables gems that freeze a pin point in time, a nano-second, though mine were more like an afternoon.
Anyway, like the infamous computer in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe, I was in Deep Thought for years. I even purchased a shakuhachi that I played late into the night in my college apartment to try and settle my mind before sleep. The more I read about oriental culture the farther away I seemed to be getting from the ideal, from a true understanding. It seemed that all theses westerners that had obtained some status with their honorific Japanese names were grasping something that I was not.
I finally understood that to understand a culture you have to participate in it. I had to do something, not just read and contemplate my navel. I could not just experience it intellectually but had to experience it physically. I needed a way into it, and there enters all the –do’s: Judo, Kendo, Akido, and for me Chado.
Other than reading the pop classic Shogun and watching the mini-series of the same name starring Richard Chamberlin, I had never been exposed to Chado. (Chado is also known as Chanoyu or Japanese Tea Ceremony.) In western culture it is somehow linked to geisha’s, samurai and the images of Hiroshige’s wood-block prints of the Floating World. But one day on a early Sunday afternoon in the Spring of 1984, I found myself in the front room of a 3-flat on Sheffield Avenue in Chicago, fumbling with a fukusa, the silk napkin that hold such an important place in the practice of Chanoyu.
Never having any ability at sports. Never being able to ice skate, roller skate or ride a skateboard because of a complete lack of coordination and balance, I somehow took to the physical aspect of the Tea Ceremony. I was able to pick it up almost instantly. That is other than the kneeling! After taking the four introductory classes twice in one year I was asked by the teacher’s senior student if I wanted to become a student of Tea.
From an American point of view where teachers are often held in low regard and even the lowliest of students think they know more than their professors, I did not grasp what being asked to become a student really meant in Japanese culture. I assumed I’d take a few extra lessons and then just get on with my life. Tea would end up just like the shakuhachi, which is carefully wrapped up and sitting on a shelf in my dining room.
The Japanese concept of the relationship between the teacher and student is much more comprehensive than in the west. Teachers hold a very important place of respect in Japanese culture. Once deciding to enter into a relationship with a teacher, one is committing to a lifetime of studies, knowingly or not. This relationship is not just to learn some specific discipline, that is almost beside the point. The relationship, the study is away towards a certain level of spirituality. It is a gateway or a stepping-stone to a spiritual path.
Now I may be belaboring the concept of spirituality here, I do not think of it in religious terms. In Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugene Herrigel, the point is not to get the point of the arrow into the center of target or to gain some higher level of spirituality; the point is to be totally aware and committed to the process. To the reality and truth of each moment and if one is successful in that, there is no other alternative than the arrow hitting home.
The goal in the study of the “Way’s” is not to obtain a honorific name; to hang another title on one’s self. It is to practice and in practicing, become worthy of it. So in my frivolous beginnings at trying to adopt Japanese culture, I ended up developing skills in how to interact with the world. In every interaction that I have throughout the day this “Way”, I came to realize through the actual physical preparation of tea, has completely altered my perception of the world and how I interact with it.
