East, West and Wabi-Sabi
Asian Tea Culture's Rise in U.S. Café Society
by Oliver Benjamin

Before you study Zen, a bowl is a bowl and tea is tea.
While you are studying Zen, a bowl is no longer a bowl
and tea is no longer tea. After you’ve studied Zen,
a bowl is again a bowl and tea is tea.
  —Traditional Zen saying

In the United States, tea is no longer tea.

While America has been a resolutely coffee-drinking nation ever since dumping heavily taxed British tea at the Boston Tea Party in 1773, attitudes toward tea have changed drastically over the last decade or so. It appears that after centuries of gutsy, coffee-fueled progress, we may be entering into a moment of Zen. Sales of tea varietals have shot up from $1 billion in 1990 to more than $6 billion in 2005, and they are set to reach an estimated $10 billion by 2010. But this isn’t your grandfather’s little bag of tea dust: Connoisseurship of the beverage has begun to mirror that which coffee enjoyed in the 1990s. And as coffee sales level, tea is poised to gain huge ground on the much-ballyhooed $21 billion industry. What is the sound of one hand clapping? It matters little to tea-industry mavens, just so long as we sip tea with one hand and applaud with the other.

Of course, Zen can be a pretty confusing undertaking—just witness the saying quoted on p. 36. What does it actually mean? Similarly, that kind of elliptical, opaque philosophizing is at the center of much of the hoopla surrounding the new cult of tea. Hundreds of Web sites pay testament to the curative powers of tea, the divergent personalities of tea drinkers and coffee drinkers, and even the quasi-religious aspects of tea and the far-flung cultural influences that have contributed to its mythology.

Just as with Zen practice itself, discerning truth from self-deception in regards to tea can be a thorny task. Despite the claims of legions of tea drinkers and even medical doctors, there is still little hard scientific evidence that tea is medicinally curative. Much has been made of the purportedly cancer-fighting “antioxidant” properties of tea, especially green tea. But recent studies have showed that while it contains different forms of antioxidants, black tea might be just as prodigious in this sense, if not more. Recently, the tea-as-medicine movement suffered a huge blow: The beverage with the highest concentration of antioxidants in the world has turned out to be that ubiquitous old brew, coffee—and not Guatemalan shade-grown Arabicas, either, but your common, truck-stop robusta. Sadly for some, it seems that antioxidants are everywhere. Blueberries, in fact, have been found to contain the highest concentration per serving in the world. So should we expect to see swarms of dark-purplish green tea Frappuccinos hitting the streets soon? Maybe. Yet all this talk of health and antioxidants and scientific studies may just miss the point of why tea has acquired such ascendant popularity in the West.

Longitudes and Attitudes

It is more than cliché to say that the West drinks coffee while the East drinks tea. Coffee is the second-most consumed beverage in the United States and continental Europe, and the same goes for tea in Asia. (Water, of course, is in first place.) What is easy to forget is that both of these massively consumed beverages are potent drugs, purveying more than anything else some celebrated psychotropic effects. Which is to say, they modify the dispositions of entire populations. And though both contain the same principal chemical—caffeine—those who imbibe both commonly attest to the fact that each harbors its own unique personality, conferring on its user a mood substantially distinct from the other. This is likely because each contains myriad other compounds that not only interact with the caffeine molecule and its absorption, but which, like secondary instruments in an orchestra, may provide emotional overtones entirely their own.

While it would certainly be specious to contend that the Eastern mindset is steeped directly from tea and the Western one percolated straight from the coffee pot, it is difficult to deny that poetic resonance exists between societies and the beverages they celebrate. One would be hard-pressed to imagine France without the poetic pride of wine, Ireland without the demonstrative derring-do of whiskey and America without the effervescent enthusiasm of Coca-Cola. Furthermore, when one considers the attendant differences between a street-side Parisian café, an Irish pub and an American diner, it stands to reason that if you are what you drink, you might also be where you drink as well.

A Pregnant Pause

Lao Tzu, the fabled originator of Taoism, said this: The meaning of a room was to be found in the emptiness enclosed by the roof and the walls. He also said that the utility of a cup lay in the space where the tea might be put, not in the cup itself. These poetic analogies are central to what Japanese scholar Kakuzo Okakura identified as “Teaism,” a sort of philosophical mixture of Taoism, Zen Buddhism and tea culture that informs the traditional Japanese outlook on life. “Teaism,” as Okakura defined it in his classic 1906 tome “The Book of Tea,” “is the art of concealing beauty that you may discover it, of suggesting what you dare not reveal. It is the noble secret of laughing at yourself, calmly yet thoroughly, and is thus humour itself—the smile of philosophy.”

That might sound fun, but as anyone who has taken a college-level course on traditional Japanese Tea Ceremony knows, there’s very little smiling involved, and far less laughing. An austere ritual that may span over five hours, every movement and gesture and object in a tea ceremony is highly codified in accordance with principles of conduct set down centuries ago. It is this rigid aspect, embroidering so many of the Japanese (and other Asian) arts, that leads many outsiders to presuppose Asians as emotionally cold and devoid of feeling. But this is an unfortunate interpretation that is at best superficial and at worst borderline xenophobic, for the objective of the Japanese tea ceremony is not to robotically follow arbitrary rituals. Those are just the “roof and the walls” of the experience.

The true objective of the ceremony is the creation of what mythologists term “ritual space.” Just as the tea needs a cup to contain it, so does the ideal experience of the tea ceremony require a series of actions to conjure up the proper sensual opus of the experience. As aesthetic theory often dictates that each part of an artistic masterpiece should reflect aspects of the whole, and vice versa, so it is with the ideal Japanese tea ceremony. A kaleidoscoping of categories, it is at once the teahouse and the space within, the tea cup and the tea it holds, and most importantly, the participant and the “tea” (spirit) within. The more adept the tea master is, the more his technique will allow these to balance each other and engender a transcendent, if not mystical, experience at the heart of each fortunate guest.

Everyday Tea

Of course, the majority of us don’t have the opportunity, the time or the temperament to appreciate the sublime beauty of a Japanese tea ceremony (called cha-no-yu—literally “hot water for tea”), but we do have access to and a growing appreciation for tea itself. Although some might argue that the tea in a tea ceremony is arbitrary—it might just as well be performed with hot chocolate or chicken soup—most aficionados of tea would strenuously beg to differ. One of the main reasons is that unlike coffee and most other beverages, few people, if any, toss back a cup of tea in a hurry. There is something about the hot tea aesthetic that mandates slowness and a gradual awakening to the taste and sensation the drink provides. Unlike coffee, which injects an immediate rush to the eyeballs, tea must be approached gingerly to be fully appreciated—smelled first, then slowly sipped and contemplated as it gradually rustles awake the senses.

This type of slow contemplation is in fact historically intertwined with the history of tea in Asia, as Buddhist monks have historically employed tea to fortify themselves in meditation. And while coffee lore makes much of the fact that Sufi mystics have used coffee to do the same in the West, it is a statistical blip in comparison with tea and the East. Coffee has not been thought of as a beverage of meditation and repose, but of commerce, writing and intellect. Where tea has been said to have facilitated the rise of Zen (both were said to be brought to China from India by Bodhidharma), coffee has been credited for ushering in the Industrial Revolution.

Whether well founded or not, this dichotomy still exists today. People who drink tea tend to praise its simultaneously calming and gently uplifting qualities, while those who don’t generally claim it doesn’t provide the necessary oomph to get them through a busy day of work. So why is tea so rapidly gaining market share? Workloads sure aren’t getting any lighter, and tea isn’t getting any stronger.

It might just be that a growing subset of Americans are developing a more Asian outlook on things. Aside from the obvious borrowings of Eastern art, medicine and cuisine, U.S. consumers have been subtly adopting more aspects of Eastern aesthetics and philosophy as their own, and many have been doing so without even realizing it.

Wabi-Sabi and Shabby Chic

The aspect of the Japanese aesthetic that most directly informs Teaism is referred to as wabi-sabi. It is a concept informed by the central principle of Zen metaphysics: that the world is in a constant state of flux, so the highest ideal of beauty is one that mirrors this ultimate reality in being imperfect, impermanent and incomplete. Thus, wabi-sabi is normally tinged not only with a serene melancholy and spiritual longing, but also with the lightness that Okakura referred to when he spoke of “calmly laughing at oneself.” Wabi-sabi is what occurs when you carefully write an apt haiku, when you stop to take a breath or when you wait patiently for tea to steep properly.

It wasn’t always this way, though. Whereas previous periods in Japan were hallmarked by ornamental excess, in the 16th century, the greatest teamaster in Japanese history, Rikyu, first introduced the practice of wabi-sabi in tea ceremony. It has since come to typify the entire pastime. Moreover, this same revolutionary aesthetic grew so popular it practically diffused throughout the entirety of Japanese culture.

In principle, wabi-sabi is just a matter of outwardly upholding Buddhist precepts—everything in moderation, an avoidance of ostentation and desire, and a cultivation of subtle awareness. Outwardly, wabi-sabi can be found in the simple yet elegantly functional tea-making implements used in tea ceremonies as well as their naturalistic imperfections. Moreover, it is especially evident in the Spartan, unassuming design of teahouses themselves.

Anyone who has gone shopping for home furnishings over the last few years might implicitly recognize these ideas. In a 2000 article in The Globe and Mail, Janice Lindsay pointed out that the West is wholeheartedly adopting the principle of wabi-sabi—largely through the teachings of that unlikely proponent of Zen, Martha Stewart. “Less is more. Simple is best” has become the new anthem. The result over the last few years has been a severe paring-down of what we consider beautiful. Classic, streamlined and naturally weathered designs now dominate the catalogues of most high-end shops.

This should be cause for celebration. After the garish advertising and riots of commercialism that typified the second half of the last century, a corrective backlash has taken place, and tastemakers in the United States have been forced to acknowledge the rise of a more savvy consumer, one far less seduced by flavors of the month. And while there always will be those who immediately run to try any brand-new coffee concoction, an ever-growing segment of the market is turning in the other direction—toward the simple and enduring satisfactions of wabi-sabi. To them, the future is increasingly redolent of tea, and all that the Tao of Teaism carries with it.

Strangers, Exchanging Glasses

“East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet.” That Rudyard Kipling line has been so often repeated that it’s a wonder no one ever points out how utterly wrong he turned out to be. East and West have long since met, and the embrace rapidly continues to deepen. Any visitor to areas of Tokyo, New York, Kuala Lumpur or London will concede just how much the borders between the hemispheres have blurred. At the metropolitan level, we’ve cross-fertilized each other to the point where our technologies, fashions, media, philosophies and more importantly, cuisine, are densely intermingled. While there may be a Thai restaurant on every block in Los Angeles, Colonel Sanders might in fact be the most recognizable culinary icon in Bangkok. If the fastest way to a person’s heart is said to be through the stomach, it is no wonder intercultural exchange often begins in the belly.

So while the international press may make much ado about the increasing number of U.S. coffee franchises in Shanghai and Taipei, the twin rivers of philosophy and predilection are, in fact, flowing both ways. Increased American fascination with the exemplary flower of the East stands to grow in direct proportion with the flourishing of our black brew in cafés on the other side of the earth. This not only promises to open up new avenues for commerce, but should help us to better understand another side of humanity, and even—as mawkish as this may sound—another side of ourselves, at which point we should hope (as the Zen saying goes) that tea will cease to be a burgeoning market trend and will once again just be tea.

 

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