A well brewed pot of tea creates an empty space for the Universe to rest a while. It is the eye of a storm, offering complete stillness, complete calm — if only for a moment.
In advanced tea brewing every single factor is significant. This extends to every movement, every sound, each thought form. When awareness is raised past a certain point, we as tea makers are operating under a microscope. Here is the platform where upon the all illusive place of perfection becomes a possibility. It is even possible, for some, to transcend perfection — or at least conventional attitudes toward what is possible.
To try and control the manifold variables consciously would be too much for anyone, and so the expert comes to rely on the automatic functions of mind and body. Much as we trust the heart to regulate its beating, the blood to circulate, the organs to do their various jobs — so it goes with the actions of a tea service. Having to consciously regulate all these functions individually would prove overwhelming, the results often times disastrous.
Willingness to surrender control over the process, of the moment, is alien to some people. It is, all the same, the only way to go beyond the autonomic, wooden marionette way of tea brewing. It is the path by which one comes to achieve the states of being described as: tea and tea maker as one, heaven and earth united, tea and Zen are one flavour…
In the end, as with all things related to the philosophy of gong fu, either you can do it or you can’t. The result will, absent of all explanation, speak for itself.
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