Cha-no-ya
The Heart of Cha-no-yu Many people ask, “What is the purpose of studying the Tea Ceremony?” Although there are many possible answers to this question, let me offer one which is deeply important to me.
The modern tea ceremony stems from Sen-no-rikyu who built the archetypical tea room in 1590. This room still exists today in Kyoto and is known as “TA-I-AN”. The room is extremely small – only two tatami mats in size (1 tatami mat is about 2m x 1m). We consider this to be the ideal size for entertaining guests in a tea room.
The entrance to this room, known as Ni-ji-ri-gu-chi, is very narrow and has a low threshold. In fact, it is so low and narrow that to enter the room, guests must crouch down on their knees. There is also no room to bring in any outward indications of status. In the time of the samurai,this meant that they would have to remove all of their swords and farmers would have to leave aside their sickles.
The purpose of this design was to require guests to adopt a body posture of humility upon entering the tea room. It was also Sen-no-rikyu’s desire to have people sit together as equals, without the typical indicators of rank or social status, and thus create an atmosphere of courtesy and intimacy between individuals. It was his hope that if we could transcend these artificial barriers of wealth and status, then we could come to a deeper understanding of each other as human beings.
I feel that, in this way, the tea ceremony has a way of stripping away the external world and creating a quiet space for us – literally and figuratively. It becomes an act of both humility and reciprocal understanding...an act of connecting one heart to another. This connection helps us to see each other as equals and to develop a deeper sense of empathy for each other in this world. This is why it is still valuable to us today.