The Book of Tea

A very great, mercifully brief work of spiritual literary art:

The Book of Tea

"Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism of the social order. It is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life."    Kakuzo Okakura, The Book of Tea

The opening sentence of The Book of Tea says, "Tea began as a medicine and grew into a beverage." 

Medicine is an aesthetic, a moral, a science, an art, a faith: in short, magic. Tea is a magical beverage.

"Those who cannot feel the littleness of great things in themselves are apt to overlook the greatness of little things in others."

Confucius probably said the same thing ages ago, but Okakura says it so neatly here. He continues:

"The average Westerner, in his sleek complacency, will see in the tea ceremony but another instance of the thousand and one oddities which constitute the quaintness and childishness of the East to him. He was wont to regard Japan as barbarous while she indulged in the gentle arts of peace: he calls her civilized since she began to commit wholesale slaughter on Manchurian battlefields."

Ouch.

Kakuzo lived from 1862-1913, and reads like an Asian predecessor of  G.K.Chesterton: occasionally overwrought but otherwise shrewdly enlightening. Consider this passage an example of shrewdly enlightening (and entertaining):

"Why not amuse yourselves at our expense? Asia returns the compliment. There would be further food for merriment if you were to know all that we have imagined and written about you. All the glamour of the perspective is there, all the unconscious homage of wonder, all the silent resentment of the new and undefined. You have been loaded with virtues too refined to be envied, and accused of crimes too picturesque to be condemned. Our writers in the past -- the wise men who knew -- informed us that you had bushy tails somewhere hidden in your garments, and often dined off a fricassee of newborn babes! Nay, we had something worse against you: we used to think you the most impracticable people on the earth, for you were said to preach what you never practiced."

'too picturesque to be condemned' is a revealing concept. We admire evil, if sufficiently interesting or astounding, and sufficiently afar.

Consider this passage an example of occasionally overwrought:

"There is a subtle charm in the taste of tea which makes it irresistible and capable of idealisation. Western humourists were not slow to mingle the fragrance of their thought with its aroma. It has not the arrogance of wine, the self-consciousness of coffee, nor the simpering innocence of cocoa."

'simpering innocence of cocoa' is an example of metaphor overpowering its subject.

"Samuel Johnson draws his own portrait as 'a hardened and shameless tea drinker, who for twenty years diluted his meals with only the infusion of the fascinating plant; who with tea amused the evening, with tea solaced the midnight, and with tea welcomed the morning.'"

Quoted here for the beauty of Johnson's writing and thought. 'solaced the moonlight' is an example of when the pathetic fallacy is perfect not pathetic.

"Charles Lamb, a professed devotee, sounded the true note of Teaism when he wrote that the greatest pleasure he knew was to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident. For Teaism is the art of concealing beauty that you may discover it, of suggesting what you dare not reveal. It is the noble secret of laughing at yourself, calmly yet thoroughly, and is thus humour itself -- the smile of philosophy."

Discretion is the better part of valor, and a good deed is best done in a way that doesn't leave its beneficiary feeling burdened by a debt of gratitude. But who doesn't secretly wish to be found out?

And so forth. The book reads like jasmine blossoms, freshly picked, unfolding as they lie among dried green tea leaves: a rare aroma to be absorbed in humble tea, whose strength is to be mildly uplifting but not so high as to lose touch with the earth.

Closing this essay, I'll note this coincidence: yesterday I visited a local espresso haunt. This being uptown Portland, the  customers were fit, youngish, and generally affluent, and the decor was earnestly chic with wood well-polished and tile colorfully laid.

But the noise was obnoxiously invasive, a threshold above the chattering background we usually find so invigorating. This noise was daunting; and when the espresso machine squealed it was like an airport runway when several jet airplanes are warming up their turbines. The modern spirit of coffee has grown raucous rather than bracing, pretentious not reflective. And I LIKE coffee. I generally start my day with a pot of coffee before even considering questions like, 'Should I have coffee this morning?' I am as addicted as a caffiend can be without stuttering.

While there, I read from Obadiah in the Old Testament the following (emphases mine) and inked in my notebook the following excerpt:

"The arrogance of your hearts has deceived you, You who live in the clefts of the rock," (Obadiah speaks here of Petra, the ancient hidden city located in southern Jordan, properly known as Wadi Musa) "In the loftiness of your dwelling place, Who say in your heart, Who will bring me down to earth? 'Though you build high like an eagle, Though you set your nest among the stars, From there I will bring you down,' declared the Lord."

In The Book of Tea we read: "The stars lost their nests, the moon wandered aimlessly among the wild chasms of the night."

Nests of stars, wild chasms... coincidences are, if nothing else, merely coincidences. But if something more, so be it. In man's search for hidden meanings, does it matter that I'd ordered a mocha, tempering the "self-consciousness of coffee" with the "simpering innocence of cocoa"?

Kukuzo Okakura (Japanese names are so much fun to say), of course, gets the last word: "Meanwhile, let us have a sip of tea. The afternoon glow is brightening the bamboos, the fountains are bubbling with delight, the soughing of the pines is heard in our kettle. Let us dream of evanescence, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things."

A song:

Sanctuary