The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura

My friends know how much I like a good cup of tea - Irish Breakfast by choice, Lapsang Souchong if I am feeling adventurous.  Despite my liking for the beverage, I have never set much store by any ceremony that may accompany it: a cup, a teabag, some boiling water and a splash of milk - that's me.  Oh, and some peace and quiet.  Works for me.

But there more to tea than brewing and drinking, and that is what Okakura tells us about in his little book, first published in 1906.  In this slender volume, we are told about the history of tea, from its beginnings as a medicine, through its development as a beverage, to its culmination as the central element of a rigorous zen ceremony.

In setting out this history, Okakura delights the reader with digressions into historical anecdotes about tea, art, architecture, monastic life and zen philosophy, among other things.  The author is well aware of the beauty of the natural world, and he makes it shine out of every page.  Through terse but evocative prose, Okakura opens the Western mind to the psychology of the East (if we can use such broad terms), and the reader comes to a realisation of the philosophy underlying the aesthetic of the tea ceremony:

It was the process, not the deed, which was interesting.  It was the completing, not the completion, which was really vital.  Man came thus at once face to face with nature.  A new meaning grew into the art of life. The tea began to be not a poetical pastime, but one of the methods of self-realisation.

There is so much more to this book that I can possibly convey in the limited space available to me.  It is certainly worth reading, perhaps it is better to be lived.  But how?  Oh well, I'll have to think about that one over a cuppa.