The Ceremony of Attention

The Japanese tea ceremony, often called chanoyu—literally, the “way of tea”—is much more than a sophisticated ritual for drinking a revitalizing infusion.

It is a ceremony that cultivates the five senses (which we will address in the next five chapters of this section of the book) in the following way:

• Taste. The tea served is of the highest quality. Typically, a single cup of extremely pure tea is drunk, and its flavor endures for a long time afterward.

• Smell. The scent of the infusion, intense and fragrant, is also important, as are those of the sweets eaten as part of the ceremony. If the ceremony is conducted in a traditional teahouse, the smells of the wood, the garden’s moist soil, and the trees are also part of the experience.

• Sight. The tea sets are especially beautiful in their simplicity and are admired and praised as part of the traditional ceremony. The gentle movements of the tea master are also a feast for the eyes, since they perform a precise choreography throughout the ritual.

• Touch. Holding the hot cup in your hands before raising it to your lips activates this fourth sense and symbolizes contact with the serenity of the home through chanoyu.

• Sound. There may be the rustle of the leaves if we are surrounded by trees, and in the modern tea ceremony, participants speak and listen with the utmost attention, according to an etiquette we will explore later on.

Chanoyu is a call for us to pay attention to all five senses and to be anchored in the present, making the ceremony an art that goes far beyond drinking tea.

Now that we know how to make time stop, let’s spend a few pages traveling into the past to see how this delicate art came into being.

Raku and Kintsugi

In the sixteenth century, the tea master Sen no Rikyū revolutionized the design of the tea ceremony room, reducing it to just two tatami mats, and he was also a great connoisseur of the ritual’s different utensils, which in those days were almost always imported from China.

Drawing on his knowledge, Rikyū decided to create a new kind of teacup, called a raku. With the help of his friend Tanaka Chōjirō, he designed one that was even more straightforward than the Chinese ones, whose beauty lay in their simplicity.

Rikyū’s tearoom and the creation of the raku style laid the foundations of what we now consider the Japanese aesthetic.

We can trace back to the same period another key concept of this aesthetic, with profound significance for the human soul: kintsugi. Also known as kintsukuroi, kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing ceramics with a mixture of lacquer and powdered gold.

Kintsugi, in Japanese, is written like this: 金継ぎ

—Kin 金 : gold

—Tsugi 継ぎ: repair or stick two pieces together

The art of repairing broken ceramics was already known in China and can be seen in Zhang Yimou’s bucolic film The Road Home, a love story about a simple country girl and a schoolteacher, an educated young man from the city.

The young woman has no other way of demonstrating her love than through her cooking, and the bowl in which she prepares food for the teacher ends up getting broken on the road. She is distraught by the loss of a bowl with such emotional value but finds a solution in the form of a roving craftsman who practices an ancestral technique that has almost passed into oblivion. By making precise holes in the ceramic, and with the help of some metal staples, he manages to repair the bowl that symbolizes the young woman’s love.

Japanese culture has always distinguished itself by reworking Chinese traditions—sometimes with more sophistication—and this case is no exception.

Legend has it that over five centuries ago, the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa sent to China two teacups that had great value for him and had been broken. The cups were returned to him stuck together with staples—the same method used by the craftsman in the film—and at first he was displeased with their crude appearance.

In time, Yoshimasa realized that the bowl repaired in China had a different personality from the rest of his collection. Even though he still didn’t like the way it looked, he thought it had character, so he asked some Japanese craftsmen to fill its cracks with the noblest possible material.

That is how kintsugi was born. Ceramics are repaired with gold, and the gold lines between the cracks give the ceramics a new aesthetic.

The story goes that Yoshimasa fell so in love with this aesthetic that he asked his artists to deliberately break other pieces of pottery, some of them highly valuable, so that they could be repaired in the same way.

The Kintsugi Philosophy

Kintsugi is a radical example of wabi-sabi, which teaches us that there is beauty in imperfection. It can also be seen as a metaphor for life, in which we accumulate wounds and losses.

Leaving our emotional wounds exposed forever, like a broken cup that goes unrepaired, causes unnecessary suffering. But we can recover, using what we have learned from our misfortunes and failures. In this way, our scars will tell our stories like the golden lacquer of kintsugi.

Just like a delicate piece of porcelain, the human heart can be damaged, but concealing the damage out of shame isn’t the solution. The damage is part of our history and has brought us to where we are. Just for this, it deserves the brilliance of gold, which reflects a light that in this case is our own.

PHIL LIBIN’S TREASURE

Phil Libin is the cofounder of tech startups Evernote and All Turtles. He is not only a great Silicon Valley innovator but also a connoisseur of all things Japanese who spends a lot of time in Tokyo, where he is a familiar face at technology conferences.

Libin is also a huge fan of Star Wars, and he had used the same The Empire Strikes Back mug in his office since founding Evernote.

But one day, he dropped it, and it broke into more than ten pieces.

“I swept up the pieces into a plastic bag but was too sad/lazy to throw them out,” Libin admits.

When he learned that his mug could be brought back to life through kintsugi, he took the pieces to an artist named Shunsuke Inoue, who lives in Fukushima and who managed to repair the mug.

Libin insists that he likes it even better than the original mug. In his own words, “With the new cracks highlighted in gold lacquer, it’s not just restored, it is elevated.”

In the purest version of wabi-sabi, kintsugi doesn’t attempt to hide any flaws. Quite the opposite: It highlights them, giving objects a new personality.

Having problems is part of being alive. It is our difficulties and how we face them, more than our periods of contentment, that shape us throughout the course of our lives.

The Cracked Pots

There is an old Indian parable about the beauty and utility of cracks. Thanks to them, we allow the freshest and most creative aspects of ourselves to show through.

The story’s protagonist is an Indian water bearer who had two large pots that hung at each end of a pole he carried on his shoulders. One pot was perfect and could retain all the water as the water bearer carried it along the path from the stream to his master’s house. The other pot had several cracks and when it arrived at its destination, only half the water remained.

For several years, each pot took its path, and the result was always unequal. The one that knew itself to be perfect was proud of its achievements, impeccably serving the purpose for which it had been created. The cracked pot felt ashamed of its cracks, since it could fulfill only half of its obligation.

On one occasion, its sadness was so great, the cracked vessel decided to speak to the water bearer: “I’m ashamed of myself. I want to apologize to you. Because of my cracks, you can deliver only half my load and are paid only half the money you would otherwise receive.”

The water bearer answered, full of compassion: “On the way back, I want you to look at the beautiful flowers growing by the side of the path.”

Indeed, the pot noticed that there were many beautiful flowers all along the path. Despite this, it still felt sad, because in the end only half the water arrived at its destination.

“Have you noticed that the flowers grow only on your side of the road?” the water bearer pointed out. “I’ve always known you were cracked, and I found the bright side: I planted seeds all along the route we take, and you have watered them each day without noticing. As a result, now I have all these flowers. If you weren’t the way you are, with all your cracks, I would still be walking through a desert.”

Wabi-cha

Returning to Sen no Rikyū, we’re going to tell the story of the originator of the word wabi and the wabi-cha tea ceremony, along with Takeno Jōō and Murata Jukō.

As we said earlier, it was one of Sen no Rikyū’s disciples who was the first to mention the words ichigo ichie in his personal notes. Getting to know the essence of wabi-cha will help us to better understand why ichigo ichie originated in the practice of this discipline.

During Japan’s Muromachi period (1336 to 1573), the tea ceremony spread throughout the country, and it featured ornate utensils imported from China. Wabi-cha emerged as a reaction to this aesthetic, using utensils with far simpler designs, handcrafted in Japan.

In addition to these minimalist utensils, wabi-cha is also known for having simplified the place where the tea ceremony was performed.

The rooms designed by Sen no Rikyū were just large enough for two people. One of the tearooms originally designed by this great master still exists today. Designated a national treasure, it is called Taian, and is located to the south of Kyoto, near the Yamazaki station. The structure of the Taian room has been used as a model for other rooms where wabi-cha is practiced.

• The room consists of only two tatami mats, with a small area in the corner to heat water for the tea. Until then, the smallest rooms had had four and a half tatamis.

• There is also a tokonoma, a nook at the end of the room where there is a hanging scroll bearing a poetic message, perhaps the motto ichigo ichie. In fact, it is found in all kinds of tearooms.

• A corner of the room is reserved for the cast-iron kettle, which is made using a sand mold or, in modern times, a furnace.

Illustration of a tearoom designed according to the standards established by Sen no Rikyū. There is very little space, with one tatami for each person: the guest and the tea master.

The minimalist wabi-cha space creates a unique sensory world where it is difficult to escape into the past or future. It forces us to focus on the present, since the only other things in the room are the other person, two tatamis, the tea, and a scroll bearing a message.

Sen no Rikyū designed the room this way so that the practice of wabi-cha would be as direct and honest as possible, without any form of distraction. This mythical tea master also believed that wabi-cha provided a way of getting to know oneself in the most honest way possible.

ECONOMY OF COLOR

In Japan, when one color takes center stage, an effort is made to prevent the interference of others. For example, in wooded areas, where greens and ochers are dominant, Buddhist temples blend in like chameleons, using wood and other natural tones, so as not to stand out against the forest but instead to form part of it.

As an exception, inside the main building of a Buddhist temple, other shades, like gold, are allowed, to give the impression of having entered a different space or world.

Economy of color is present in the rooms with tatamis where the tea ceremony is performed. The walls are of similar shades to the tatamis. The idea is that the attention of those present should not be absorbed by a mix of colors.

When the tea is ready, green stands out above all else.

Create Your Own Tea Ceremony

Given our connection to Japan, we have had the opportunity to enjoy the chanoyu in many teahouses. After the adventure in Kyoto with which this book began, we said goodbye to each other in Tokyo, in a modern Ippodo chain teahouse, where silence and harmony prevailed.

A server delicately brought us a tray with our chosen tea, which we could see—and smell—in a small vessel we would use to brew ourselves, along with a kettle, a cup, and a sweet.

Without a tea master to perform the ritual, we took charge of making that chanoyu memorable, and before going our separate ways at the door of the Narita Express—the high-speed train that links the capital to the international airport—we gave each other a hug and wished each other goodbye, saying ichigo ichie.

Times have changed, and nothing is forcing us to carry out strict tea ceremonies like Sen no Rikyū’s, though if you’re visiting Japan for the first time, it’s a beautiful experience to have once in your life.

In our day-to-day lives, though, chanoyu can be carried out anywhere: in a public teahouse, with the participants seated around a table; or just in a living room, in the company of friends. The important thing is that when the tea is served, you allow time to be still, putting daily worries, criticisms, and complaints out of your mind.

It’s essential for those participating in the ceremony to do so with their hearts full of ichigo ichie. In other words, they should appreciate that the time they will spend drinking tea with the rest of those present is something extraordinary that will never happen again.

A few rules of etiquette for our version of chanoyu:

• The meeting place should inspire calm. Meeting in bars or restaurants with loud music, or spaces not insulated from the sound of traffic, is not recommended.

• Begin the meeting with the greeting ichigo ichie, to remind yourselves that you are going to experience a moment that won’t be repeated.

• As the ceremony unfolds, allow space for silence and don’t insist on “filling the void” with just any old conversation.

• When you speak, avoid any potentially controversial, unpleasant, or stressful topics. Any issue that sows division should be off-limits.

• Instead, encourage topics of conversation that make the participants feel at ease: comments on the uniqueness of the place, the quality of the tea, and the beauty of the teapot; your recent artistic or cultural discoveries; recommendations of travel destinations, restaurants, or parks . . . basically anything that’s pleasant to talk about.

• Listening is essential to making everyone feel part of the ceremony. For this reason, you should avoid interrupting others or getting distracted from what they are saying by thinking about your own concerns or rehearsing your answers.

• At the end of the chanoyu, say goodbye with ichigo ichie, to remind yourselves that you have experienced something unique that will never happen again in the same way and that is therefore a memory deserving to be treasured.

HAVING TEA WITH YOURSELF

Although the chanoyu ceremony was conceived for at least two people—traditionally the tea master and a guest—it’s a great idea to have a regular “tea with yourself,” as the Uruguayan author Walter Dresel suggested.

Constantly tied up with commitments and external obligations as we are, a date with ourselves once a week can be a true balm for the soul.

You can set aside a fixed time and day every week to spend in a café or teahouse that you find inspiring. Once you have ordered your tea, give yourself the gift of that time to think, take notes in a journal, or simply breathe deeply and take in the world around you with all five of your senses.