Emptiness in Tea Practice

Emptiness in Tea Practice

From Talking Tea by Ken Cohen

January 29, 2021 · 44 min

About this episode

The episode explores the concept of emptiness in the Japanese tea practice of chado with guest Drew Hanson.

When a friend who's a longtime Buddhist meditation teacher asked me recently if "emptiness" comes into our study and practice of chado, the Japanese way of tea, I didn't quite know how to answer. On Talking Tea we had chatted a bit about emptiness in a Daoist context, and its relation to tea, in our episode Tea & Daoism: Adjacent Connections , and we touched on some of the connections between tea and Buddhism in a few of our earlier episodes. But I hadn't thought about how, or if, emptiness comes into play in the specific practices of the Japanese way of tea. To explore this question further, we asked Drew Hanson, an instructor in the Urasenke school of chado and founder/owner of the Boukakuan Japanese Tea House in New Jersey, to join us again on Talking Tea. (Drew was our guest in two earlier Talking Tea episodes, Tea, Heart to Heart and Chabana: Flowers for Tea .) Drews begins by talking with us about what emptiness might mean in the context of tea: about thinking and non-thinking in our tea practice, about being and breathing, physicality and non-verbal communication between the host and guests at a tea gathering. Drew discusses how, through all of this, there is "mindfulness…

People in this episode

Host: Ken Cohen

Guest: Drew Hanson

Topics covered

  • emptiness
  • chado
  • tea practice
  • Buddhism
  • Daoism
  • mindfulness
  • non-verbal communication

Keywords

  • emptiness
  • chado
  • tea
  • Buddhism
  • Daoism
  • mindfulness
  • tea gathering

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Urasenke

Books & works: Tea & Daoism: Adjacent Connections, Tea, Heart to Heart, Chabana: Flowers for Tea

Places: New Jersey

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