On Monday, the Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies (FEAS) hosted a Japanese tea ceremony led by Stephen A. Morrell. A landscape architect specializing in Japanese-style gardens, Morrell has done several study tours to Japan and is a practitioner of Zen Buddhism and the tea ceremony. He explained the history of tea ceremony and presented formal tea to one guest recipient.

“When I was in my late teens and early twenties, Zen and meditation were en vogue, but when I was really exposed to [Zen Buddhism], I began to pursue it,” Morrell said. “With tea ceremony, it’s the different type of aesthetic that really interested me; there’s a focus on small things, which is completely contrary to western ideals of beauty.”

Guests were seated around two portable tatami mats in the FEAS Gallery in which the demonstration was held. Seated on the mats, Morrell began by giving a small explanation of Zen Buddhism and how it intimately related to tea ceremony.

“In monasteries in China, the monks began to drink tea to stay alert during long periods of meditation, and it became integrated into their daily ritual,” Morrell said. “As Buddhism spread, so did tea. Tea ceremony is considered one of the arts of Zen practiced today.”

Morrell took one volunteer to participate as his guest for the demonstration; in the ceremony, tea is usually served to only one person. They began with a greeting of semi-formal bows to each other, performed while seated on their knees. Both held this sitting position for the duration of the ceremony.

“You sit in the tripod or cross-legged [position], but we often don’t sit up correctly (with straight backs), and it can become quite painful,” Morrell explained. “It took me a long time to deal with the pain in my knees. I was very clumsy, and my first teacher had fun with me, often poking at my wounds to make me focus; teaching is approached very differently in Zen.”

He next began the time-consuming process of bringing out implements of the tea one by one, including a plate with cookies, a wash bowl with hot water, a bamboo whisk, a water scoop, a rice bowl for the guest to drink from, and a jar filled with powdered tea.

“Unlike infusion teas which we’re used to, the tea used in tea ceremony is powdered tea, which is just tea leaves dried and ground into a very fine powder,” Morrell said. “The difference is that you’re actually drinking the leaves.”

Morrell then cleaned all the implements with a napkin, ritually unfolding and refolding it after every utensil. He then asked the guest, visitor Jan Werner, if she would please have a sweet. She then raised the plate to forehead level, placed it in front of her, and took a cookie. This was to soften the bitterness of the tea, Morrell explained.

“He explained things very well,” Werner said. “His voice was so soft and soothing; it really put me at ease and let me enjoy participating.”

If the guest wanted to be seen as polite, Morrell added, it was tradition to make a little slurp sound on the last sip. Werner’s last slurp did not disappoint, and after another bow Morrell began the ritual of again cleaning all utensils and slowly bringing them out of the room one by one.

Just as in Zen Buddhism meditation, there is no goal in the tea ceremony; it is process-oriented, according to Morrell.

“A scattered mind jumping around twenty different things goes against what is natural,” Morrell said. “It takes you away from your moment…in a way, it’s like being absent from your life. I think that when you focus on being and give yourself to the now, it’s very different from being completely self-focused.”

The ceremony finished with a final bow between host and guest, and Morrell subsequently took everyone into the tatami room to observe the Shôyôan garden and explain its outlay. He talked about how the garden would be altered to conform to the new expansion of the FEAS. [New building design and model are currently on display at the Center].

Morrell designed and built the Freeman family Shôyôan Teien (Shôyôan garden) in the summer of 1995. Morrell has constructed several public and private meditation gardens throughout New England, and he has been the curator of the John P. Humes Japanese Stroll Garden in Mill Neck, New York since 1981.