In the whole history of ceramics, the Chinese developed some of the most elegant work imaginable.
 With translucent porcelain, white clay, the most subtle designs of all.
 Unbelievable. The lacquer, the boxes in pure gold, and oh, you know, it was delicious stuff.
 But then, it was just like having too much éclairs and ice cream and filet mignon.
 Now what happened? The people who practiced Zen suddenly got an eye for the beauty of the ordinary.
 There were two reasons for this. One was that they became fascinated with what happened spontaneously.
 What pattern a brush would make when handled roughly and the hair lines were shown.
 They also, because they practiced Zazen, which is sitting quietly, not thinking of anything special,
 but having a completely open mind. That puts you into a state where you get much better eyes and ears than you ordinarily have.
 And you start really seeing things. Somebody suddenly realized, you see, just the sound of the water is marvelous.
 And so in the same way, they found that it was quite as satisfactory to listen to the kettle boiling as to listen to an elaborate concert.
 So what did they do? They started through, particularly a man called Senna Rikyu, to give parties for very small, few guests,
 in shacks, little huts in the garden, made of very primitive materials such as mud walls.
 And where they would go and sit, and out of the simplest utensils, carefully chosen by a superb artist,
 they would simply sit and enjoy the uncomplicated life. And so was born the tea ceremony.
 It was a going back to the primitive, after people were sick of too much civilization.
 I was present at a tea ceremony celebrated by a Zen monk, who happens to be an American.
 And he is a man who has done a lot of mountaineering.
 And he has, therefore, with him at all times, the sort of equipment that you take on camping in the mountains,
 because he does a lot of climbing in Japan. And I said to him, "Won't you, this afternoon, it would be very nice to have the tea ceremony.
 And you did it once before here, and it was so pleasant. Would you serve it again?" He said, "Yes, by all means."
 Before, he had served tea ceremony in the style that Zen monks do it, which is rather simple and direct,
 and much more comfortable than all these well-educated ladies who are on, tittering about it, and are on tiptoe,
 and nervous, and hoping they won't make a mistake, and all that kind of thing. It's just dreadful.
 So he suddenly came in with a small primer stove, set that down.
 Then he had an old paint pot, which had inside it an aluminum mug. He set that down.
 He then proceeded to take the aluminum mug out, pour water into the paint pot, and set that on the primer stove.
 But he ritually pumped up the primer stove. He did everything in the style of tea ceremony,
 but this was a dirty old primer stove. And suddenly the thing began to flame like the god Fudo.
 And he mixed the tea in the traditional way with the whisk, had all the perfect, lovely manners, handing us the aluminum cup.
 And we got into a long... It's a custom after the tea ceremony, after you've drunk, to pass all the utensils around for inspection.
 This is exactly what happened. And we found that the aluminum cup had the year 1945 stamped on it for some reason.
 We got into a discussion about styles of aluminum cups made in 1945.
 And it was the funniest thing, but it was a complete makeover of the tea ceremony into the modern idiom.


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