How wonderful it is to find one’s meaning of life in a traditional tea garden. Meaning not in the admiration but in creating and crafting one.
I had a slight idea about the tea ceremony but the Japanese Garden-Nihon Teien was something new to me. I mean I know the literal meaning of a garden but the Japanese Garden is rather symbolic and is crafted to heal one’s soul.
Gardens back home are usually beautified with flowers, plants, some benches and canopies to create a recreational place for the people, correct me if I am wrong here. I am sure it also gives a good relaxation to the visitors but would you believe me that in a Japanese Garden the arrangement of every stone has a meaning behind it. Usually the stones are arranged in the form of Shin-Soe-Tei which means main supporting complementary, where the tallest stone is kept in the center and is supported and complemented by each stone from both the sides.
More so, even the arrangements of both the trees and stones matter when they have three inspiring methods, borrowing the background from nature, replicating nature and miniaturizing nature. Inspiration came from the fast growth of metropolitan lives where the building crawls into nature at a rate faster than Cheetah. It is created for their future generation to understand and feel nature and specifically the four beautiful seasons of nature.
The three elements, stones, waterfall and greenery offer a healing power to all the fives senses of a human and this is not just a philosophy but has examples of people who were healed by the Japanese garden.
Creatively, Japanese gardens are associated with the Japanese tea houses which is yet another powerful tool of healing. Not even before I came to Japan I wished to experience the Japanese Tea ceremony, inspired from the book ‘Memoirs of Geisha’. Gladly I got to experience it two times in 1 year and the count does not stop here though. It is done in such a meticulous process that you won’t even want to blink your eyes for the fear that you will miss something significantly healing. The hosts dressed in beautiful yet simple kimonos demonstrating the entire tea making process in front of your eyes and you get to drink that tea, how therapeutic is that? It is not like in some kinds of restaurants when you cannot see the behind the scenes. Maybe that is the reason the tea ceremony is therapeutic and healing, it relaxes the eyes, taste and soul.
Having bestowed the opportunity to witness both the garden and the ceremony yesterday I even dreamt about creating a therapeutic garden with the tea house back home. But in my dream it was Bhutanese Suja instead of match tea. I was connecting the history of Suja and was passing it to the younger generations. Do you think it is a sign or just a hilarious dream?
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| And here is the most precious tea |
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