The Japanese Tea Ceremony and the Holy Eucharist

I've been teaching priest-craft to two seminarians this semester. I'm covering a lot of ground, but that is no excuse for skipping important detail of the sort they won't learn in class. I'm talking about deep body knowledge. There is a way to hold your body as a priest or deacon, a way to move through a space. A way to sit with parishioners and sip coffee. Craft is truth, too.

So when teaching a student how to prepare the gifts on the altar I start with the empty table and invite them to appreciate the emptiness that is there. Then, as they begin to make gesture of prayer through movement in that space, I mention the Japanese Tea Ceremony. Move with purity of purpose, unrushed, focused, calm.

I know, for a fact, that I am not the first person to notice a connection between the Japanese Tea Ceremony and the "manual acts" made by priests and deacons during the Holy Eucharist. Both, afterall, are formalized rituals of hospitality.

As a kid I used to watch an obscure, sub-titled Japanese docudrama series about the life of Oda Nobunaga produced by the national television network of Japan. Nobunaga is a very intriguing figure from Japanese feudal history (we're talking 16th Century) and was the principle force behind the unification of the country under a strong Shogun. He also was very interested in European Culture and was a patron of the Jesuit missionaries to his country. He even let them built the first church in Japan in Kyoto in 1576. Nobunaga was a great patron of the arts, as well, and popularized the Japanese Tea Ceremony.

Each episode of this series would start with a narrative historical preamble. One of these compared the traditional gesture of wiping the tea cup in the Tea Ceremony with a similar gesture made at the end of the Eucharist during the ablutions. The narrator then claimed that the Christians picked up this gesture from the Jesuit missionaries to Japan, who learned it by observing the Tea Ceremony. That claim sounds dubious to me, but I do think it makes sense that both ceremonies would arrive at similar gestures through independent evolutions.

It also follows that a priest looking to master the rituals of the Holy Table could learn much from the Japanese Tea Ceremony (and perhaps vice-versa). The aesthetic of the Tea Ceremony will be recognizable to anyone who has studied liturgy. The Japanese sought to embody harmony, respect, purity, and tranquillity.

Every gesture--an expression of some truth. There is something true and worthy of our attention that happens when we prepare to celebrate the Eucharist. Whether we chose to do this in a very simple fashion or a complex one, we should do it with intention and meaning. This take years of diligent practice to master, and the effort to do so can inform any other priestly skill from pastoral counselling to preaching to volunteer management.

Here is a video of part of a Tea Ceremony. Enjoy!



-t

Nantenbo Scroll Photos

As promised, here is a picture of that scroll by Nantenbo.

Interestingly, neither the dealer that sold the scroll to me (who is Japanese, btw) nor the dealer he bought it from (a specialist in scroll collecting) can read the script. Nantenbo was never very interested in making particularly legible characters; he was more interested in cultivating a kind of unstudied immediacy in his work. By comparing this work with others by the same artist, I think the characters in the upper left hand corner (next to the signature stamp) say "Daruma." Daruma (Sanskrit: Bodhidharma) is the saint who took Buddism from India to China. He's a popular motif in Zen art. That's him seated at the bottom of the scroll.

Daruma--the Patriarch of Chinese/Japanese Buddhism
The contrast between the quick, almost careless calligraphy at the top and the carefully executed Daruma at the bottom of the scroll is deliberate, obviously. Nantenbo was famous for his sense of humor and playfulness.

One of the stories about Daruma that fascinated Nantenbo goes like this: some time after arriving in China, Daruma was called before the Emperor. The Emperor asked, "What is your teaching?" Daruma replied: "Vast empiness; nothing sacred." Then he went away and spent nine years meditating facing a wall, speaking to no one. Nantenbo and other Zen Masters painted portraits of Daruma facing the wall. In this instance, it seems that we are the wall Daruma is facing. Nor does he seem particularly happy about that!

The composition of this portrait of Daruma also incorporates another important Zen motif: the Enso circle. It symbolizes "...enlightenment, strength, elegance, the universe, and the void"--in other words, everything. But what's most beautiful about the Enso in the moment of creating it. Drawing a circle free-hand is much more difficult than you might imagine, and the very task requires Zen-like presence. If you don't believe me, just try it!

Inside this Enso Nantenbo wrote:

Born within the ensō of the world
the human heart must also
become an ensō

Good stuff. I'm going to enjoy thinking about this scroll more.

-t

Nantenbo

Yesterday I finally bought that Japanese Zen scroll I've been thinking about. It was written in 1918 or 1919 by a Buddhist priest named Nakahara Nantenbo. He was a colorful figure that served as an important bridge to 20th century Zen. Here's a bit about him:

"If I cannot become a priest of extraordinary accomplishment, I will not walk upon the earth," vowed eighteen-year-old Nantenbō (Tōjū Zenchū) to his Zen Master.' The impassioned spirit of this precocious young man was to burn brightly throughout his eighty-seven years. Not only did he rise through ecclesiastical ranks to an exalted position at one of the most prestigious Rinzai Zen monasteries in Japan, he was "a Zen priest of the people."' In his determination to restore Zen to its former purity and brilliance, he emulated the severe methods of legendary Zen masters from the distant past. The thick staff of nandina he used to "encourage" disciples and frighten "false priests" resulted in a great deal of notoriety, giving him the nickname Nantenbō (nandina staff). He also published ten volumes of Zen commentaries, headed numerous Zen study groups and, by his own estimate, brushed over one hundred thousand calligraphies and paintings, which he freely gave away to anyone brave enough to ask. Certainly his efforts helped maintain Zen during Japan's tumultuous modernization. By wielding the brush with unmitigated vigor, he also may have unwittingly exerted tremendous influence on twentieth-century "action" artists and avant-garde calligraphers."

This son of a Samurai attacked the scroll with unusual speed and energy. "Splash" marks at the beginning of his strokes are common, as are abbreviations and bold, dynamic movements.

I'll post a picture when I get a chance. It's not often that I get to collect a piece of fine art, so I'm very pleased about this acquisition--a real treat.

-t

Disonance and Consonance

On my mind: fitting in and not fitting in. Consider this example....



Have you seen this article in the New York Times? Seems the culture of fear that has been seeping into North American culture has been cropping up in Japan, as well, and that has produced a uniquely Japanese response: urban camouflage. It's a clever bit of consonance, even if it doesn't work. It might be fun to get one of these outfits and wear it around Toronto just to see what kind of reactions it gets. But I'll start by getting hands on a Utilikilt. That would clash with the culture of Toronto a bit, but not if I wore it back in Seattle. I wouldn't mind getting a formal kilt too, sometime. But first I have to figure out what my family tartan would be. Again that would be playing with the boundaries of fitting in or not.

I've been thinking a lot about how much leakage to allow of Christmas into Advent. Advent is really a penitential period of preparation for the feast of Christ's incarnation (Christmas). The "Christmas Season" is really the 12 Days of Christmas, not the period of feverish shopping just before! I suppose in this sense the evangelicals' uneasiness with the commercialization of Christmas has some purchase.

I'm told in my books that historically the Christian effort to make Advent into such a period of penitence in preparation for Christmas was not entirely successful. It was introduced by the Council of Tours in 567. It was originally longer, beginning on November 11th, but was shortened in the ninth century. It was sometimes called "Winter Lent." No marriages were allowed, nor organ until Advent III. But people's enjoyment of the winter solstice could not be entirely repressed.

But "tradition" alone is not a sufficient argument to keep Christmas carols at bay. We have to consider the underlying liturgical principles. I firmly believe that the liturgical calendar is a useful and worthy Christian discipline that has more than history to commend it. It creates a structure for "the work of the people" (i.e. literally "liturgy") and structure is necessary! Indeed, every time we utter a word of the Gospel or make any religious gesture whatsoever, we have introduced structure. It's form into formlessness (to use Buddhist terms) or creation into Chaos (a nod to Genesis).

En arche en ho logos, kai ho logos en pros ton theon, kai theos en ho logos.
In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God" (John 1:1)).

(That mantra gives me the chills.)

Anyway, the point is that increased differentiation and intention of things like liturgical seasons results in a more articulate expression of the Gospel. The very fact that not doing Christmas Carols causes a feeling of privation in some is evidence that the boundaries created by the liturgical seasons have relevance and ritual power. It's a meaningful dissonance with the prevailing culture.

So this all seems like a good argument for preserving the distinctiveness of Advent. Yet here is where things can get hard for me. The question arises, "Am I being too hard on people?" It's the Matthew 23:4 dilemma--no one wants to be the priest who ties up heavy burdens too hard to bear. My instinct is to be agreeable and to make people happy by giving them the things they want. But maybe I should be going for the option that promises the most potential for spiritual growth? And yet maybe I'm just being overly strict, rule-bound and parsimonious?

I know, it seems like I'm thinking too much about this. But believe you me, there are people that care a lot about the results of my discernment about this. More prayer is needed.

Oh, of course this doesn't mean much for tomorrow's sermon. I should think some about that, now!

-t