The Pause That Refreshes
by the Rev. Colin Bossen, April 18, 2010
In my house the day begins with either a morning cup of coffee or a pot of tea. Sara is a coffee drinker. She buys the beans whole, grinds them and then brews them in a French press. Meanwhile she tends to the other portion of her morning ritual, the preparation of milk. She brings it to a foamy boil before adding it to the coffee. Before the milk and sugar are added her beverage approximates something you could stand a spoon in. Afterwards it takes on the character of pale sweet creamy beige.
In contrast to Sara I am a tea drinker. Coffee gives me the jitters. I prefer to start my day with a softly bitter cup of almost pastel green tea. The beverage is gentler to my palette and nervous system. It helps me awaken and focus slowly. But just as Sara has her coffee rituals, I have my tea rituals.
Good green tea can stand several brewings. The first brew is not always considered to be the best. I nurse my tea leaves over the course of a few days. Before the initial brew I wash my tea pot and leaves quickly with a blast of boiling water. Once they have been warmed I add water for the steep. Then I time the tea leaves precisely. Each brewing and each kind of tea requires a different length of steeping. Too short and the tea is tasteless. Too long and the resulting drink is so bitter that it is unpalatable.
I drink my tea from a white porcelain cup, decorated with dancing blue rabbits. Green tea is opaque and I like to peer into the vessel's bottom. Sometimes a stray tea leaf floats there unfurled and still as if suspended in time and space. Other times I watch the steam rise and listen to the radio or enjoy a few minutes of silence prior to taking my first sip. In the morning light before the house stirs it easy to feel at peace with the world.
Coffee and tea have played important roles in the development of the world's cultures. Their trade and cultivation have for hundreds of years been vital to commerce, literature, philosophy, science and even religion. The Japanese philosopher Kakuzo Okakura expounded upon a school of thought organized around tea in his influential text "The Book of Tea." He synthesized Zen Buddhism, Taoism and lessons from the Japanese tea ceremony to create a philosophy he called Teaism. He defined it this way: "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."
It is upon the first sentence--"the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence"--that I wish to direct our attention today. Our world is beautiful. The more we pay attention to it, the more we open ourselves to it, the more we find that beauty unfolding around us.
For Okakura much of what is beautiful about the world could be found in the Japanese tea ceremony. The tea ceremony is a ritualized meal where the host serves a handful of guests tea. It takes place in a special tea room that is sparsely decorated. Minimalism is the order of the day and, in Okakura's words, "no colour or design shall be repeated. If you have a living flower, a painting of flowers is not allowed. If you are using a round kettle, the water pitcher should be angular. A cup with a black glaze should not be associated with a tea-caddy of black lacquer." There should be no "suggestion of monotony in the room."
The objective of this minimalism is to highlight the uniqueness and beauty of each of object. With only one kettle present there is no other kettle to contrast it with. Instead one is left contemplating the kettle itself--the way the spout joins with the body and the handle forms a neat arc.
The tea ceremony itself is meant to remind the participants of the beauty found in the everyday. A true tea-master finds pleasure in the routine tasks of life rather than in punctuated moments of spiritual ecstasy. As Okakura writes, "One of the first requisites of a tea-master is the knowledge of how to sweep, clean, and wash, for there is an art in cleaning and dusting." In working to obtain this knowledge the "seeker for perfection...[may]," in Okakura's words, "discover in his own life the reflection of the inner light." Ultimately one may discover "greatness in the smallest incidents of life."
After my morning tea I always enjoy my walk to the Society. Whether the sun is shining and the sky is blue or the depths of winter are upon us I relish my fifteen minute passage from the kitchen to the office. Walking the same route each day allows me to notice subtle shifts in the seasons--the first green of spring, the brown brittle of summer grass, autumn's leafy glory and winter's crystalline bluster.
I treasure April. There are two ornamental cherry trees along my path that extend their canopy over the sidewalk. As March ends and the weather warms I await their bursting into blossom. When it comes I find myself lingering under the pale pink clustered flowers for as long as I can, peering upward into the interlaced patterns of the trees branches.
Flowers hold a special place in Okakura's Teaism. As he writes, "In joy or sadness, flowers are our constant friends. We eat, drink, sing, dance, and flirt with them. We wed and christen with flowers. We dare not die without them...Their serene tenderness restores to us our waning confidence in the universe..." Flowers restore and lift the spirit. They remind us that the world always contains beauty.
My morning walks and the season's flowers have caused me to be slightly suspicious of modern labor saving devices. Sometimes I suspect that they take the beauty out of life. My morning tea ritual or Sara's morning coffee would both be the lesser if confronted with the microwave. Our beverages would be heated more quickly but something would be lost in the process. Likewise I think of how much the poorer my life would be without my many walks to and from the Society. I doubt that I would notice the flowers. When I drive the world is compressed and goes by quickly. Walking I see each weed flower poking through the sidewalk, each toadstool erupting from leaf litter.
I imagine that most Zen monks are themselves similarly suspicious of much modern convenience. In many Zen monasteries the work is organized so that that it is the senior monks who have the more odious tasks. The master can find beauty in cleaning the latrine.
Perhaps you have heard the Navajo prayer about beauty. It reads, in part, "With beauty may I walk / With beauty before me may I walk / With beauty behind me may I walk / With beauty above me may I walk." To see the world as beautiful and live in each moment with this prayer is a true spiritual practice. Beauty is as much a subjective assessment as it is an objective value. Learning to see beauty in the everyday is a discipline we all can cultivate.
In our reading from earlier Denise Levertov seems to imply that spiritual practice and enlightenment is something that only comes at great cost. The angels float effortless from rung-to-rung. Each time Jacob pulls himself up he is bloodied and bruised. Enlightenment comes but only for those who are willing to strain themselves to the boundaries of body and mind. In the Hebrew Bible Jacob may win a blessing from the divine being but in doing so he is left with a limp.
In Eastern traditions like Taoism and Zen Buddhism, by contrast, spiritual practice is more a discipline of cultivating awareness than it is an ascetic activity that denies the body for the sake of the soul. Consider the story of the Taoist master carpenter. He was called upon by a prince to create a wooden stand for a set of ceremonial chimes. When he was finished the stand was so beautiful it looked as if it had been fashioned by supernatural beings.
The prince asked him the secret to his craftsmanship. The carpenter replied, "I am only an artisan, what secrets could I have? When I started to make the stand I collected myself to calm my spirit. After three days I was oblivious to whatever reward I might receive. After five days I had forgotten about any fame I might earn. After seven days even the memory of your court and the obligation of my commission was abandoned. My mind thus freed I got down to my art and went to the forest to look at the shapes of trees. When I caught sight of one that was the right shape the stand appeared before me. My divinely inspired shape is entirely due to the coincidence of finding a divinely inspired tree that conformed to it."
The carpenter finds the stand in the tree because he cultivates an awareness within himself. His art is about paying attention and he learns to affix his attention by slowing down, pausing, and then seeing the world anew.
We all would do well to pause likewise. If we did we might see the world under a different cast. Life might open up to new vistas of the heart and mind. Beauty might then be found in the trees that we encounter along our paths.
Learning to slow down and see beauty thus might just prove to be transformative, not only for us as individuals but for our human world. The ecological catastrophe we face has been brought about as much by the need for speed as it has been by anything else. Trees, mountains, streams, the entire natural world that sustains us, are routinely sacrificed to provide energy so that we can move faster. Coal and oil extracted from the ground power automobiles, airplanes and trains that allow us ever greater speed in our transits around the globe and through our cities. The internet shrinks the world and swiftens communication on the back of fossil fueled power plants. Petrochemicals increase crop yields but lessen soil and corrupt waterways in the name of reduced human effort for food production. Speed comes but with a great cost. If we were to live our lives a little more slowly we might find that we reduce our impact on this precious planet.
Slowing down a little also might deepen our relationship with our community. One of the reasons why I shop at the Shaker Square Farmers Market is that it allows me to develop relationships with the people who provide my family with food. Shopping at the market takes longer--most of a Saturday morning--but it offers me a greater connection with the food chain and an opportunity to pause and understand a little about our local ecosystem. There are vegetables that grow here better than elsewhere and foods that are indigenous to our region. On any given Saturday morning there are singular treasures to be found among the stalls--be they wild gathered mushrooms, uncommon berries or pastel chicken eggs. The time taken to shop reveals a little of the world's beauty that I would not encounter elsewhere.
When I can I prepare dinner with a similar speed to my Saturday shopping trips. Taking time to chop the vegetables or make a soup stock offers me a chance to enjoy the bustle of family life around me. Asa plays with a toy near my feet. Emma works on her homework nearby, interrupting now and again with a math question. Sara chats, assists or offers advice on what to do with the cream sauce. It does not always unfold like this but when it does it is bliss.
Such moments in our lives are important because they place us in the present. Like my morning tea ritual they offer a chance to just be without succumbing to the world's pressures around us. No matter how our lives are structured--be we alone or surrounded by loved ones, poor or wealthy, in ill health or vigorous--we are afforded the chance to pause, appreciate life's beauty and center ourselves. Doing so can turn life to art and daily living into spiritual practice.
One of my internship supervisors once told me how he planned to take such a pause at his life's end. He had left instructions that when he lay dying he was to have his chest and lips rubbed with Vic's Vapor Rub. The sense of touch is often the last sense to go and he reasoned that the rubbing sensation would offer him a final connecting with the world around him. All his life he had used Vic's when he was sick. He hoped the cascade of memories it would bring, coupled with the present sensation it provided, might offer a moment of centering before facing whatever lay ahead.
Flowers, the Farmer's Market, a walk to work, the morning ritual of tea or coffee, whatever cultivate awareness and helps us to pause offers us the chance to center before we face what lies ahead--be it a day of work, impending ecological catastrophe or death itself. And so as I end my sermon let me offer you this one final chance to pause with these words by poet T'ao Ch'ien: "Picking chrysanthemums at my east fence, / far off, I see South mountain: mountain / air lovely at dusk, birds in flight / returning home. All this means something, / something absolute..." Or as Okakura would say, "Let us dream of evanescence, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things."
Amen.