What about approaching the tea drinking experience in a special way,
such as how a child might?

To do this, I fancy pretending to act out a tea-making/drinking
scenario in imitation of the Japanese ceremony.

What all the ingredients of the Japanese tea ceremony are, I'm not
sure. Something about two people involved in the process, which is
done deliberately and appreciation of living close to the earth, as in
days of old.

To bring out the child-like experience, I think it should be described
as a performance, or play, like children do when they are imitating
adults in some fantasy. In fact, it would probably be good if you
played at making tea with a child or two, having each do his/her part,
then tasting the result.

Kids are great at pretending something be done in a certain way, being
an actor, etc.. Also, I think kids enjoy repeating the same
experience. Probably, they like correcting each other, too. bookburn

On Jan 23, 2:49 pm, bookb...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Jan 23, 1:49 pm, bookb...@yahoo.com wrote:

On Jan 23, 3:24 pm, "Dominic T." gmail.com> wrote:

Dominic doesn't make tea ceremony sound very fun-- but *I* enjoy it,
and some of my research has been about the question of why/how tea
ceremony professionals enjoy it. This question has been actively
ignored by people writing about tea ceremony (whether in English or in
Japanese) in an effort to preserve the "profound" image... but, truth
is, an ideal tea gathering should be relaxed, have doses of
spontaneity, and be a concrete expression of the closeness of the
participants... and, I'd say lots of tea gatherings achieve this
ideal. I've even seen examples of somewhat rambunctious levity at
very elite tea gatherings, and people thought they were both fun and
successful gatherings.

I should note that the tea ceremony teachers in Japan who are the most
straight-laced, uptight and not-fun are teachers who seem to feel
insecure in the art, often cowered by status fears. The more
experienced/elite teachers are the ones who are more relaxed, who have
an easier time at being generous (and forgiving) hosts, and who have a
keener sense of *play*.

On Thu, 24 Jan 2008 07:47:53 -0800 (PST), Thitherflit
hws.edu> wrote:

On Wed, 23 Jan 2008 12:24:40 -0800 (PST), "Dominic T."
gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, 23 Jan 2008 13:03:40 -0800 (PST), toci yahoo.com>
wrote: