Tea lesson (2013.09.07)

Today was a very nice tea lesson in our Seoul branch of Urasenke. We were performing Tana-usucha. Before coming to class I was reading a bit about the tea from the books I have. I felt that I was preparing internally for the class (which is always good to do to have a really good class). Flowers were arranged by our tea teacher, Kanako Muramatsu. She brought them all the way from Japan, where they have been cut in the garden of a Japanese tea master. I was very touched. Just few days ago I read in "The Book of Tea" about the flower arrangement in the Tea World, called chabana (flowers of tea). And the attitude of the tea masters discribed in the book impressed me deeply. How much love, care, consideration they put in arranging flowers!!!

When it was my turn to "perform tea" (interesting way to put it ^^), I felt deep happiness that I can do it. It was a real pleasure. I did tana-usucha few times, so procedure was already known. I felt like my body is moving by itself. I didn't need to think a lot what to do next. And that doesn't happen often. Usually I pay a lot of attention to mistakes I make, but this time I just went along, even if I did something wrong. It reminds me of my mother who used to say: "If there is something wrong going on, pretend that it has to be that way!"

Even when I whisked the tea, it became so fluffy (!) and looked really good. It was one of the things I couldn't do well. To make tea fluffy. But I got it right! I think step by step I begin to feel the balance between amount of powdered tea and quantity, temperature of water. 

Saturday morning was nicely cool, and windy. A true refreshment after so hot summer we had here. For this reason I gave the name to chashaku - "Autumn breeze". It felt refreshing ~~~~