7.　 1. The Sense of Hearing in the Way of Tea

Generally, the sense of sight has a much stronger tendency to objectify and clarify the circumstances around us in comparison to the other senses. Meanwhile, the sense of hearing alternates between being passive and active. This fact presents an opportunity to deeply affect healing through sound.

The process of the tea ceremony as pointed out in the “Kissa Orai”, a book said to have been completed at the end of the 14th century, has many common points with Rikyu’s form as far as formality is concerned. However, the most striking difference is that Rikyu eliminated song, dance, music, and banquets from tea ceremony. When Rikyu removed all these sounds of pleasure, tea ceremony took an abrupt turn and stillness must have taken over. The tea masters once more came to confront the sounds that had been hidden behind the clamor up until then.

There is a remark by Jukoh Murata (1423-1502), who originated the wabi-cha style of tea, that resonates exactly with our subject at hand and how to deal with it, saying that the moon without the clouds is no good. Only when the bright moon is shaded behind the back of the clouds will we start to see another world. The same is true for the sounds of wabi-cha style tea: only after the fascinating melody of Japanese music ceases can an unknown world of sounds be heard.

Shin Nakagawa (1951- ) expresses it like this:
“Let’s suppose we are now in the middle of a lively crowd. How does our hearing react to that? One possibility is to open up our ears to all the sounds. In that case the sounds sweep our eardrums like an inundation. We are in the midst of a whirlpool of sounds. Another possibility is to hear nothing or to pay attention only to specific sounds. ……. Isn’t the hearing in Wabi-style tea the latter, namely not the spreading type but the centripetally oriented type? It cannot necessarily be said that the conditions in a bustling city provided a good environment for the tea masters who abandoned pleasure and were seeking peace and quiet. Nevertheless, by choosing to stay in a difficult location like Kyoto, it looks like Rikyu and his comrades wanted to improve their power of concentration.” (*23)

So, did Rikyu build his tea space on purpose in the middle of the city’s hustle and bustle to heighten his power of concentration to pay attention to specific sounds only? Does the hearing of Wabi-style tea not aspire to spread out but to condense?

If the tea of Rikyu aims for the mental state of zen, it should be following the meditation of zen, in other words the stages of Yoga.

In the eight stages of Yoga, the fifth is Pratyahara (withdraw and retreat), the sixth Dharana (concentration), the seventh Dhyana (being aware without focus), and the eighth Samadhi (enlightenment). In the Way of Tea by first of all putting idle thoughts out of one’s mind, we don’t hear the surrounding crowd anymore (withdraw and retreat). Next we concentrate on making tea, then drinking it. In this stage we selectively only hear the sounds that have to do with tea (concentration). In other words, the activity of the centripetal hearing is demonstrated. But actually, the mental state of zen only starts from this point.

The activity of introverted hearing ceases, selective sounds straighten out in a line, rather than spreading out. Together with the sounds of tea, the surrounding hustle and bustle also becomes clearer to hear. For a tea master, the surroundings are not supposed to be shut out (being aware without focus). In this way the sounds can be heard more distinctively, but we are not caught by them. The tea master’s mind is calmness itself (enlightenment).

In this sense, I dare say that the hearing in wabi-style tea is not centripetal but rather ”centripetally centrifugal”.


7.2. The Greater Importance of the Five Senses and the Common Sensation in the Way of Tea

The theory of evolution has tried to see the characteristics of the human evolution through the development of the long-range sensory organs.

Especially in Western aesthetics, sight and hearing are considered superior, while the senses of taste, smell and touch have come to be considered inferior senses. So only the kind of art has been advanced that makes full use of the senses of sight and hearing but virtually excludes the other senses. Poetry, paintings, music, sculpture, architecture, and dance principally depend on eyes and ears.

On the other hand, in the Way of Tea an installation that stimulates all five senses fully is arranged. However, the importance lies not in the stimulation of the five senses itself, but rather in leading to a certain change in body and mind through this stimulation. If we stop at the comfortability of the individual five senses, we might be able to reach relaxation, but it will not extend to a deep healing. To reach that, the sensations must descend to the level of synesthesia.

Let’s take a look at Natsume Soseki writing about drinking tea in his work ‘The Three-Cornered World’.

“Instead of putting the cup back down on the table, I raised it to my lips.
For the man of leisure there is no more refined nor delightful pursuit than savouring this thick delicious nectar drop by drop on the tip of the tongue. The average person talks of ‘drinking’ tea, but this is a mistake. Once you have felt a little of the pure liquid spread slowly over your tongue, there is scarcely any need to swallow it. It is merely a question of letting the fragrance penetrate from your throat right down to your stomach. On no account should it be swilled round the mouth and over the teeth, for this is extremely coarse. ‘Gyokuro’ tea escapes the insipidness of pure water and yet is not so thick as to require any tiring jaw action. It is a wonderful beverage. Some complain that if they drink tea they cannot sleep, but to them I would say that it is better to go without sleep than without tea.”

This is one description of how drinking tea descends to the level of synesthesia.

Synesthesia penetrates and integrates all the five senses and, according to Descartes, the pineal gland is thought to be the seat of synesthesia where mind and brain are brought together (*24). As we can see from adjectives like “white” or “sweet” that transcend the mere visual color or the taste, synesthesia is also present in everyday life.

According to Aristotle, synesthesia has not only the ability to discriminate and compare differing sensations, but it has the function to feel the effects of sensations themselves and thus perceive the unity of motion, standstill, shape, size, number that cannot be grasped by individual sensations. Furthermore, even when it comes to time, discrimination takes place through synesthesia.

Memory, even if it is the memory of a thought, cannot exist without an image, but an image is nothing other than the passive of synesthesia (*25). Synesthesia is where what I call system 1 and system 2 overlap, and forms the experience of time and space and the basic structure of thought and sensitivity. The steps called Pratyahara, Dharana, Dhyana and Samadhi in Yoga are also the process of change of appearance in synesthesia.


23 Shin Nakagawa: The Cosmos of Sounds in Ancient Kyoto , Heibonsha Limited Publishers 1992
24 Descartes: Great Ideologies of the World, Reflections sixth part, René Descartes, Kawade Shobo ShinSha 1969
25 Aristotle: On Memory and Reminiscence, The Complete Works of Aristotle, Iwanami Shoten Publishers

translated by Barbara Inui

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