TIME - although it seems that it exists only in our conscience as a useful invention, one thing is for sure: it passes very quickly in the immediate reality.
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| Grand Hotel Continental - Bucharest |
And here we are again at the majestic Grand Hotel Continental in Bucharest, in our favourite Grigoresco room, ready for a new demonstration of Chanoyu - the Japanese Tea Ceremony.
As always, the event is organised by Calea Victoriei Foundation - an impressive, if not the most impressive culture promoting foundation one may find in Romania.
We arrive the night before and prepare the setup for the demonstration. The hotel personnel helps with grace. It is late, quite, we are exhausted but all is now in place. We are ready for tomorrow morning:
Chanoyu - the never ending question: what is it? Good luck with that! It is whatever you want it to be...... and yet! So we start with the beginning: who are we? what is it that we want? why?
The first part of the program: LECTURE: Chanoyu as a ritual. Chanoyu as a mythological journey, a journey leaving the day to day noise and disorder to wait in silence, step through the path of purification offered by a roji garden filled with the singing of the birds, freshly splashed with water, to step inside chashitsu, to re-discover the purity, respect and harmony and find in the end the inner peace. The hand of God on your head, sipping the miracle drink you may understand the sense of Oneness.
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| Before anything the formal definition of Chanoyu |
Hard to take all this in a short time to a public who is open, kind, curious but of course a novice. Try to make sense out of this. But the public is also smart: they understood and stepped into the game.
The first tea demonstration - a tea gathering at 4 a.m. many many years back - on the way to the morning prayers at the temple. A monk and his son arrive to sip a cup of tea in the chill of the morning while the night fades away and the morning light sneaks into chashitsu - Mihai Nishiike had the kindness to help us here and showed to the public what concentration, respect and modesty is all about.
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| Usucha temae with Hisago dana |
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| Taking sweets |
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| Kansha |
The next demonstration: we are now today, 2017 and girls in beautiful kimonos serve tea during a chakai:
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| Making tea using ryurei chishin dana |
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| The public observes with attention |
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| Purifying the bowl |
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| Offering the bowl of tea |
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| Purifying the tea container |
Everyone in the public had the chance to taste a wonderful nerikiri made for this occasion by Miyuki-Do shop and to experiment the taste of Matcha.
All concluded well. Students were happy that we had another successful presentation of the Chanoyu tradition for the Romanian public
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| Good work done! Congratulations! |
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| Who am I? With all this ZEN I do not know anymore! |
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| Kimono good for tea, Apple good for multimedia |
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| The team! |
