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Seeking Purity And Harmony Through Tea

5 min readMay 25, 2025
A cherry tree with pink blooms and a pine tree and a redbud tree beginning to bloom surrounding the Japan House on University of Illinois, which contains a traditional tearoom and is reflects traditional minimalist Japanese architecture.
The entrance to Japan House on the University of Illinois campus in Urbana where guests can leave behind distractions and preoccupations and experience the tranquility of a traditional Japanese tea ceremony.

The first thing you are asked to do when you arrive at Japan House on the University of Illinois’ Urbana campus is to remove your shoes and put on a pair of socks. Not just any color socks, but white, which the kimono-clad hostess reminds you is the color of purity. The next thing is to leave behind your cell phone.

Japan House is one of the few places in the Midwest where one can experience the beauty of a traditional tea ceremony. The “way of tea,” as it is known in Japan, is all about purity, what the Japanese call, sei. It is also about shedding for a while whatever preoccupations and distractions might be troubling us. One day last week, it became for me a welcome respite from the tragedy, cruelty, and disharmony that is so much a part of daily life these days.

Harmony (wa), respect (kei) and tranquility (jaku) are the tea ceremony’s other signature values. The value I felt just as keenly was actually one that isn’t specified by tradition, but nonetheless permeates every movement, every moment: that of humility

Traditionally, one enters the tearoom through a small entryway that requires even a small person like me to stoop. One sits either cross-legged or crouches around a square tatami mat. No one sits above anyone else, and even the hostesses who serve the tea do so resting on their haunches so their heads are never above those of their guests, and guests are always at eye level with their servers.

Each time a bowl of tea is served, one bows to the hostess and she to you. Then you bow to the person to your left, who will be served next, as if apologizing for being served before they are.

Showing reverence for others recalls the ancient monastic practice of statio in which monks and monastic sisters enter a chapel walking side by side, each bowing to the other before taking their seats. At Mount St. Schlolasica Monastery in Atchsion, KS where, I am a lay associate, the sisters first bow to one anohter from either side of an aisle every time they gather for community prayer. It is a way of saying, I recognize the divine spark in you.

It is impossible to not look differently upon those to whom you bow and who bow to you. These displays of humbleness within the tea ceremony seem especially refreshing at this time in our country when a sense of humility is in such short supply in so much of our public discourse.

Best of all, there is no talking during a tea ceremony. It is a time to let silence seep into the body.

A hostess crouching on her leggs, prepares a bowl of tea before the traditional utensils for a tea ceremony such as metal tea pot, wooden ladle, bamboo whisk.
The tea ceremony is meant to create an atmosphere of purity, harmony, tranquity and respect.

There are usually floor to ceiling windows on one side of the tearoom that look out on a garden. That is also the case at the Japan House where one gets a view of the cherry blossoms, irises, hostas and peonies blooming outside.

Always there is wall hanging of Japanese calligraphy that changes with the seasons. Since the ceremony I attended took place on graduation day at the university, the tearoom’s wall hanging aptly read: “Cultivation never ceases.”

The ceremony itself consists of a series of highly prescribed movements for both servers and guests. At the start of the service, the hostess slowly, carefully folds a silk napkin known as a fukusa eight times, to represent the Buddha’s Eightfold Path that includes:

Seeing our circumstances more objectively

Managing our thoughts

Choosing right expressions intentionally

Taking right actions

Practicing good habits

Contributing positively to the well-being of others

Being mindful

Gaining clarity by paying attention to our thoughts

Every movement the hostess or guest makes is also highly choreographed from the way the hostess mixes the tea powder in hot water with a bamboo whisk, to the way guests are to turn their bowls (the tea is served in bowls, not cups) before drinking.

Tea ceremonies use a powdered green tea called matcha which has a strong herbal taste unlike any leaf green tea. Perhaps it is apocryphal, but the hostesses told us that one of the reasons the facial skin of Japanese women often looks so flawless and healthy is because they drink a cup of matcha each day.

Matcha leaves a foamy residue in the bottom of a bowl. We were invited to gaze at the residue in our bowl and see what it resembled. Mine looked like a fish, or else a whale. It made me think of how the fish was an early symbol for Christ, and also the Old Testament story of the prophet Jonah, who was swallowed then happily spit out by a whale.

The two young hostesses that served our tea were both students at the university who have taken advanced classes in Japanese culture and traditions. When I asked one of them about her major, she told me it is biology. I inquired about the effect practicing the way of tea has had on her life. “It’s made me want to be of service to others,” she said. She intends to attend dental school after graduation.

The tea ceremony is intimately tied to the Japanese concept of ichi-go ichi-e, often translated as “one time, one meeting.” It is a reminder of the fleeting nature of all things, the preciousness of every moment and every person we encounter.

After the hour-long tea ceremony ended, my husband and I walked slowly through the Japan House gardens, stopping often to gaze at the spring flowers, admire the architecture of the trees and the distinctive patterns of their bark.

For just a short while, I could forget the devastation in Gaza, the death in Ukraine. I could stop thinking about our own government’s efforts to cut health care for the vulnerable, food assistance for needy children, its tearing apart of immigrant families and tearing down of so many of the guard rails that have made us a nation of laws.

I could focus on the simple truth that we are made for purity, harmony, tranquility, respect, and yes, humility.

This week, how can we be bearers of those values wherever we are?

A pond surrounded by a willow tree and several other trees and bushes in the gardens of the Japan House on the University of Illinois campus in Urbana.
The pond in the Japan House garden at the University of Illinois campus. The garden, like the tea ceremony, is meant to suggest, purity, harmony, respect and tranquility.

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Judith Valente
Judith Valente

Written by Judith Valente

Author of 6 spirituality books & 2 poetry collections. Award-winning reporter for Wall Street Journal, PBS-TV, Washington Post & 2 IL public radio stations.

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