Ceremony

The Japanese tea ceremony (jap.: sado or (old) chado), is also known as the tea path or tea ritual and its philosophy corresponds to that of the Zen. The tea ceremony is a social gathering whose sequence follows certain rules and where the host offers tea and cakes to the guests. To facilitate an 'inner focus' of the participants, the ceremony takes place in a deliberately plain tea house. The rules and procedures require thorough care and need to be learned for several years.

From the 14th century onwards, the custom of drinking tea spread also among the upper class. The parlour game Tocha was created where the guests were served tea from different regions. They then had to allocate the tea to its respective cultivation area.

Often, the following anecdote is used to explain the essence of the tea path:

The schoolboy Rikyu Sens once asked the following: "What exactly are the most important parts whch have to be understood and followed during a tea ceremony?"
"Prepare a delicious bowl of tea, prepare the char coal in such a way that it heats the water, arrange the flowers like they grow on the field; in the Summer, evoke a cool feeling; in the winter, a warm one; do everything previously, be prepared for rain, and give everyone of your fellow men and women your whole heart."
The schoolboy was somewhat unsatisfied with this answer because he could not find anything of as high a value that could have been declared the secret of this ceremony. "I know all of this already..."
Rikyu answered, "well, if you can lead a tea gathering without departing somewhat from any of these rules that I just told you, I will be your student."
(Answers of masters following the pattern "then I will be your student" are very common in Zen stories.)