On 'Tea and Zen, One Taste'

cha zen ichi mi — Tea and Zen, One Taste.

On the origin

The word that sees tea and Zen as one taste. Its root is Zhaozhou’s ‘go and drink tea’ (Record of Zhaozhou), developed in the Song as cha-chan-yi-wei, Zen-and-tea-one-flavour. A tradition holds that Yuanwu Keqin wrote these four graphs, but no such hand survives — the extant Yuanwu hand is his seal of approval to Huqiu Shaolong — and the four graphs do not appear in the old koan collections. Their fixing as a phrase belongs to later, especially early-modern, tea discourse.

On the reading

The hand that prepares tea and the mind that sits and steadies its breath are not held apart. Water is boiled, the bowl is wiped, a single cup is drunk — in each act, only this moment. The taste of Zen and the taste of tea are not divided on the tongue. Within one bowl, the two dissolve without a seam.

On the garment

The seal for this phrase was hand-carved in Tokyo by the artist Satake Hōsen. The front carries this phrase’s seal; the back and inside label carry the Hōsen seal (寳千), printed in vermilion.

The garment is Bella + Canvas 3001 (short sleeve) or Gildan 2400 (long sleeve). A vessel for the word, not the subject itself.

― hosen, tokyo