 "Photo:")
High in the Rockies above Boulder, Colo., a young tea enthusiast found a connection between the rugged mountain terrain and the Japanese art of Chanoyu, or tea gathering.
Quite simply, the picturesque view of Boulder replaced the scroll traditionally hung on his wall and a natural arch stood in the place of a precise flower arrangement. The only tools needed were a traveler's tea kit and a thermos of hot water.
Building upon this personal experience, Randy Burks, who teaches Chanoyu in Salt Lake City, makes a habit of serving tea to his friends and guests deep in Utah's Canyonlands. Whether in his living room or underneath Pine Tree Arch, he can stay true to the art form, he said.
Indeed, the Japanese have "combined tea with nature for centuries," Burks said.
"The Japanese have given precedence above all else to the ideal that in taking a bowl of tea, one flies free to this world apart," Sen Soshitsu writes in the introduction to his book, "The Japanese Way of Tea."
"It's trying to get you to enjoy the present moment and be aware of it," Burks said, and an imposing and breathtaking natural landscape, distant from civilization, makes it easier to slow down and separate from everyday routine and the mundane.
"Americans crave this separation," said Rebecca Sheeran, owner of the Tea Grotto, a local tea shop. The need to take a moment from our busy lives and slow down, along with mounting research on the health benefits of tea, contributes to its rise in popularity in Utah and all over the country.
"Slowing down is a way of life," Sheeran said.
For Burks, the tea gathering is most beneficial as a kind gesture from a host to his friends. Either with months of preparation or a spontaneous impulse, the host leads the event like a "poem," Burks said, a poem that "he alludes to using taste and smell and visual objects."
"(Chanoyu) is not a religion," Burks said. "It can be secular."
In fact, at Burks' gatherings, the only topics of conversation off limits are "religion, sex and politics" or anything that might spark an argument or bad feelings.
Although tea's popularity in Salt Lake City is recent, the beverage has been a cornerstone of Japanese culture and heritage for centuries.
The first written account of the beverage is tied to slavery: In 59 B.C., according to Soshitsu, purchasing and preparing tea appears on an obscure list of the duties of one of Chinese scholar Wang Bao's slaves.
For centuries after that, as tea permeated all eastern cultures, it remained an indicator of class, nobility and religious status. Buddhist monks incorporated it into their studies and religious ceremonies, and as Buddhism spread into Japan, so did tea.
It took a while for Chanoyu to grow into its present incarnation. As detailed in Soshitsu's book, lavish parties in the courts of Japanese nobility turned tea drinking into an elaborate contest during the 14th century, where experts could decipher from its taste the exact region where the tea was grown. Tea from certain areas was said to be inferior and only suitable to be consumed by the lower classes.
Eventually, Japanese tea masters began to condemn such taste contests, calling them a drain on society and an exploitation of the farmers who grew the tea leaves, Soshitsu wrote.
The current Chanoyu ideal was born in the 16th century of Sen Rikyu, who Burks called the ultimate tea master of all time. Rikyu emphasized a tea gathering that belonged in a small grass hut rather than a palace.
"The samurai had to set his two swords aside, and commoners could sit in the grass hut as his equals," Soshitsu wrote.
The most famous example of Rikyu's new style of tea gathering comes from his employer Lord Hideyoshi, who wrote in an invitation to a Chanoyu he held in the woods, "For all men…no matter who they are or from what distance they may have come, it is hereby decreed that Lord Hideyoshi will personally prepare tea for them." In addition to this promise, Hideyoshi made a point of including visitors from China to his gathering.
Rikyu found his end as the first tea martyr, Burks said. In a dispute with Hideyoshi over a "matter of taste," the details of which are uncertain, Burks said, Hideyoshi ordered Rikyu to kill himself -- Rikyu, of course, felt obliged to follow orders.
Ever since Rikyu, Chanoyu has survived and thrived through feudalism, colonialism and World War II. It is so vast in its complexity that entire universities are dedicated to the art form.
Burks himself graduated from the Urasenke's school in Kyoto, Japan, where he earned his credentials to teach Chanoyu in Utah. Before his excursion to Japan, Burks became enamored with the Asian arts at the U, where Lennox Tierney, a now-retired faculty of the art history department, gave him his inspiration to pursue a life devoted to Chanoyu and Zen Buddhism.
Tierney introduced Burks to the single-most influential practitioner of Chanoyu in Utah, Sauki Tamae. Sauki Sensei, as Burks called her, came to Utah in the 1920s and was met with the hospitality of the United States government that sent her family to the Japanese internment camp at Topaz, Utah, during World War II. Throughout the tragedy, Sauki Sensei kept Chanoyu alive by using powdered milk instead of tea and an old bowl and tea whisk.
When the government released Sauki Sensei, she moved to Salt Lake City and eventually received the "governor's award from the state of Utah for her almost single handed efforts in spreading tea and its related arts within this region," according to Burks' website, www.chanoyutah.org. She died in 1998 at the age of 98.
Sauki Sensei's death left Salt Lake City in need of a tea master, and Burks has filled the role with gusto. He and his fellow tea enthusiasts, with the moniker Cha-no-Yutah, are giving a tea demonstration this Saturday at noon at the Salt Lake City Public Library.
a.fifield@chronicle.utah.edu
