Many people talk about the tea ceremony in Japan, and I have always thought that it is wrong, but I have not known much about the Japanese tea ceremony. Recently, I deliberately read two books on the theme of tea in Japan, "The Book of Tea" by Okakura Tenshin and "Tea and Beauty" by Yanagi Soyue. Among them, the "Book of Tea" is not only popular in Japan, but also in Europe and the United States, and has been selected as a middle school textbook in the United States.
After reading the two "tea" books, my first feeling is that I haven't seen tea. "The Book of Tea", "Tea Recipe", "Tea Shu", "Tea Record", "Daguan Tea Treatise" and other traditional Chinese classic tea works are full of how to make tea, make tea, and taste tea. The choice of boiling water fuel and water source, one of the boiling water is boiling and the other is boiling, and boiling water is so fine. Almost all of the content is for one purpose, to make better tea, make better tea soup, and make people understand tea better. The Japanese Book of Tea is the layout of the tea room, tea utensils, flowers, art, aesthetics, religion, etc., and the most inked content on tea in the "Book of Tea" is quoted from Lu Yu's "Book of Tea", and it is said that tea is an improvisational drama with tea, flowers, paintings, etc. as the plot. If you look at some information about the Japanese tea saint Sen no Rikyu, it is mostly tea ceremonies, tea ceremonies, rules and regulations, and so on. Sen no Rikyu said, "The techniques of the tea ceremony are centered on the Taizi technique, and there are thousands of rules and laws for all kinds of things, and the ancestors of the tea ceremony mainly memorized and mastered these rules when they learned the tea ceremony. And the purpose of learning the tea ceremony is to do so." The rules of the Japanese tea ceremony are so detailed that when entering the tea room, the left foot or the right foot should be stepped first, a bowl of tea should be drunk in several sips, and the guests and hosts of a tea party should bow to each other one or two hundred times, which is more cumbersome than imagined. Tea utensils are very important to both Chinese and Japanese tea cultures, but the Japanese tea ceremony focuses on the art and aesthetics of tea making, and the Chinese tea ceremony focuses on whether the tea utensils are suitable for tea. For example, in "Tea and Beauty", the appreciation of the world's first tea bowl "Kizaemon Ido": it is the ultimate tea bowl, showing the ultimate beauty of tea. On its dripping glaze, you can feel the unrestrained beauty of nature. "The Book of Tea" writes about tea bowls: Yuezhou porcelain and Yue porcelain are all green, and green is good for tea. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, Weng Donghui in the "Chaoshan Gongfu Tea Classic" can be called the pinnacle of tea utensils: the cup should also be small, shallow and white, small is a sip and exhausted, and shallow water does not leave the bottom. If the cover is not thin, it cannot be fragrant, and if it is not clean, it cannot be colored.
If the tea ceremony is a tree, tea is the backbone of the Chinese tea ceremony, while in the Japanese tea ceremony, tea is just a larger fruit on the tree. The tea ceremony in Japan has taken a different path, and it cannot be said that it is wrong to leave the category of tea, but it can only be said that it is the difference in the characteristics and culture of each country. There may be many people who wonder how the Japanese tea ceremony can care so little about tea. In fact, the last tea in the Japanese tea ceremony has a bitter taste, which is not good to taste and irritates the stomach, so they have to eat tea and eat before drinking tea. Its tea production method is from the Song Dynasty in China, but it cannot produce the "sweet and smooth" good tea in the "Daguan Tea Treatise". Professor Zeng Shiqiang said that there are at least three levels: the first level can be said to be rules, order, systems, laws, etcThe second layer is hard to say;The third layer cannot be said. The Japanese tea ceremony can only be regarded as the first level of the Tao, so the focus is on rituals and procedures. Chinese tea ceremony in the first.
The second and third layers, it is difficult to say, it cannot be said, the only way is to make tea seriously, drink tea, experience the true taste of tea, and keep approaching the Tao. That is to say, the technique that Zhuangzi said is close to the Tao, so the foundation of the Chinese tea ceremony also lies in the understanding. This is related to the difference in the origin of tea culture in China and Japan, when tea first entered Japan, it was a luxury that only the upper class could enjoy, and the religious color was very strong, so it paid great attention to the form, and realized the "four rules of the tea ceremony" (harmony, respect, purity, and silence) through very strict, complex and even cumbersome forms. Strict programming, lack of relaxed, liberal atmosphere, but easy to get started, the Japanese tea ceremony has become a religion in a certain sense, which is also amazing.
Chinese tea culture is rooted in the daily customs of the common people, and naturally there are not so many complicated systems. There are a lot of people who drink tea, but there are very few people who talk about the tea ceremony, and even the Chinese view of no tea ceremony is also very marketable. Indeed, in today's tea industry, chaos is everywhere, demons are dancing wildly, and it is not easy for ordinary people to drink good tea, and what kind of "Tao" do they talk about. On many occasions, it is a matter of secrecy and even subtlety. But Chinese culture is so magical, you can't talk about it, the Tao is there. The Tao is the law, the essence, and when we try to understand something deeply, we walk on the path of the Tao. Take the work or profession of each of us as an example, the master who has been immersed in the industry for many years talks about the Tao at the head of the head, because he understands it more deeply, is closer to the essence, and is closer to the Tao. Personally, there are at least three stages of the Chinese tea ceremony: making tea, making tea, and tasting tea. For those of us who drink tea, we pay more attention to the two stages of making tea and tasting tea. When we learn more about the rules of making tea and tasting tea, we will brew tea better, and we will be closer to the essence of tea - the true taste of tea. So as long as we want to understand the taste of tea, we are practicing the tea ceremony. In the limited social range of individuals, there are many friends who seriously pursue the "taste of tea", and the Chinese tea ceremony has a deep foundation and continues continuously. It's just that the tea is deep, and it is inevitable that there is some mystery. The Chinese tea ceremony is ethereal and free, and there is no formal guidance, which makes it difficult to get started, and the road to understanding and understanding tea is not so easy to practice. Personally, I feel that the door of tea is a layer of window paper, and those who know that this door is in the ** will be broken with a slight click, and those who don't know may be poor for ten or twenty years, or in the wrong way.
The Tao is very good, and it is very good. It's really hard to say. The little cow felt the difference between Chinese and Japanese tea culture, and forced the tea ceremony, but in fact, he couldn't say a few words. For us, it is firewood, rice, oil, salt, sauce and vinegar tea, as well as qin, chess, calligraphy, painting, poetry, wine and tea, elegant and vulgar. Tea ceremony and life are also integrated, drinking tea well, living well, is the expectation of every tea lover. If a person preaches the Tao, the road is not far away.