The Book of Tea | Page 7

the best tea in the world.
The southern Zen spread with marvelous rapidity, and with it the
tea-ritual and the tea-ideal of the Sung. By the fifteenth century, under
the patronage of the Shogun, Ashikaga-Voshinasa, the tea ceremony is
fully constituted and made into an independent and secular
performance. Since then Teaism is fully established in Japan. The use
of the steeped tea of the later China is comparatively recent among us,
being only known since the middle of the seventeenth century. It has
replaced the powdered tea in ordinary consumption, though the latter
still continues to hold its place as the tea of teas.
It is in the Japanese tea ceremony that we see the culmination of
tea-ideals. Our successful resistance of the Mongol invasion in 1281
had enabled us to carry on the Sung movement so disastrously cut off
in China itself through the nomadic inroad. Tea with us became more
than an idealisation of the form of drinking; it is a religion of the art of
life. The beverage grew to be an excuse for the worship of purity and
refinement, a sacred function at which the host and guest joined to
produce for that occasion the utmost beatitude of the mundane. The
tea-room was an oasis in the dreary waste of existence where weary
travellers could meet to drink from the common spring of art-
appreciation. The ceremony was an improvised drama whose plot was
woven about the tea, the flowers, and the paintings. Not a colour to
disturb the tone of the room, not a sound to mar the rhythm of things,
not a gesture to obtrude on the harmony, not a word to break the unity
of the surroundings, all movements to be performed simply and
naturally--such were the aims of the tea- ceremony. And strangely
enough it was often successful. A subtle philosophy lay behind it all.
Teaism was Taoism in disguise.

III. Taoism and Zennism
The connection of Zennism with tea is proverbial. We have already
remarked that the tea-ceremony was a development of the Zen ritual.
The name of Laotse, the founder of Taoism, is also intimately
associated with the history of tea. It is written in the Chinese school
manual concerning the origin of habits and customs that the ceremony
of offering tea to a guest began with Kwanyin, a well-known disciple of
Laotse, who first at the gate of the Han Pass presented to the "Old
Philosopher" a cup of the golden elixir. We shall not stop to discuss the
authenticity of such tales, which are valuable, however, as confirming
the early use of the beverage by the Taoists. Our interest in Taoism and
Zennism here lies mainly in those ideas regarding life and art which are
so embodied in what we call Teaism.
It is to be regretted that as yet there appears to be no adequate
presentation of the Taoists and Zen doctrines in any foreign language,
though we have had several laudable attempts.
Translation is always a treason, and as a Ming author observes, can at
its best be only the reverse side of a brocade,--all the threads are there,
but not the subtlety of colour or design. But, after all, what great
doctrine is there which is easy to expound? The ancient sages never put
their teachings in systematic form. They spoke in paradoxes, for they
were afraid of uttering half-truths. They began by talking like fools and
ended by making their hearers wise. Laotse himself, with his quaint
humour, says, "If people of inferior intelligence hear of the Tao, they
laugh immensely. It would not be the Tao unless they laughed at it."
The Tao literally means a Path. It has been severally translated as the
Way, the Absolute, the Law, Nature, Supreme Reason, the Mode.
These renderings are not incorrect, for the use of the term by the
Taoists differs according to the subject-matter of the inquiry. Laotse
himself spoke of it thus: "There is a thing which is all-containing,
which was born before the existence of Heaven and Earth. How silent!
How solitary! It stands alone and changes not. It revolves without

danger to itself and is the mother of the universe. I do not know its
name and so call it the Path. With reluctance I call it the Infinite.
Infinity is the Fleeting, the Fleeting is the Vanishing, the Vanishing is
the Reverting." The Tao is in the Passage rather than the Path. It is the
spirit of Cosmic Change,--the eternal growth which returns upon itself
to produce new forms. It recoils upon itself like the dragon, the beloved
symbol of the Taoists. It folds and unfolds as do the clouds. The Tao
might be spoken of as the Great Transition. Subjectively it is the Mood
of the Universe. Its Absolute is