The Tea Cloth

In an old wooden house in the city of Kyoto, in a room no larger than a small boat, there lived a tea master named Sen. He had learned tea from his father, who had learned from his father, who had learned from a teacher whose name had been forgotten because he had never written it down.

The room had four mats on the floor. It had a low door that grown men had to bow to enter. It had a single shelf with a single bowl. It had a small fire pit cut into the floor where water heated in an iron kettle that was older than anyone in the city. In the corner, folded neatly, lay a white cloth — the cloth used to wipe the bowl, the scoop, the rim of the kettle.

Sen folded that cloth a thousand times a year. He had done so for forty years. If he had wanted to add it up, he would have arrived at a very large number. He did not want to add it up. He folded the cloth.

One autumn afternoon a young student came to learn. He was bright. He had read books about Zen. He arrived with the eagerness of someone who has decided to be enlightened by next spring. Sen welcomed him without ceremony. He gave him a place on the mat. He prepared the tea.

The young student watched the master's hands. The scoop dipped into the powder. The bamboo whisk moved in a small precise blur. The water poured at exactly the angle it had poured for forty years. Then the master picked up the white cloth and folded it. Once. Twice. A small crease along the edge. A turn. A tuck. The cloth, when he set it down, looked the way the cloth had always looked when Sen set it down.

The student said, Master, that fold — you have done it so many times. Do you not grow tired of it? Sen looked up. His eyes were warm. He said, very softly, Today's fold is not yesterday's fold. Today's hand is not yesterday's hand. The cloth is the same. The cloth is also not the same. If I folded it the way I folded it yesterday, I would not be folding it. I would be remembering folding it. I do not want to remember tea. I want to make tea.

The student bowed. He sat very still. He drank the tea slowly. When he left, he walked down the long temple steps and did not speak to anyone for the rest of the day.

Inside you, a small body is doing the same small motion ten thousand times a day. The same heartbeat. The same swallow. The same opening and closing of a hand it has not yet seen. None of it is boring to the body. The body does not say, again? It says, yes. Tonight, when you wash a cup, or fold a piece of cloth, or pour water from one vessel into another, try to do it the way Sen folded — as if for the first time, even though it is the thousandth. You are teaching the small one inside you what it feels like when a life is not in a hurry.