Falling in Love with the Way of Tea: Interview with TMH Staffer Kathy Lyons

A reflection on practice by Other Teachers & Folks We Value

On working for The Mountain Hermitage & Following The Way of Tea…

TMH: We’re speaking today with Kathy Lyons, administrative person for The Mountain Hermitage, and we’re asking her about her work for the Hermitage and about her involvement with the Japanese Way of Tea. What exactly do you do for the Hermitage?
Kathy: As the admin person, I do things like work on the financial end of things, register students, help with scheduling retreats, maintain mailing lists, take minutes during board meetings, work with guiding teacher Marcia Rose on creating magazine ads, flyers, fundraising letters,…

TMH: Wow. That’s a lot. So you really hold together the logistics for the Hermitage. How did you come to the Dharma?
K: My mother is Japanese and so Buddhism was a part of our lives growing up. Just simple things like having a family altar, observing certain Buddhist ceremonies. Because my mother was studying the Japanese Way of Tea or Chado, she introduced me to her teacher at New Years in my senior year in college… and I fell in love with the Way of Tea. That took me into Zen Buddhism because “Tea and Zen are One Flavor (Cha Zen Ichi Mi)“, as they say. I started on that path in 1990 and went to Kyoto on a scholarship to study Chado for a year in the Midorikai program of Urasenke Foundation. I ended up staying for 6 years, studying at a kind of university of Tea and then for a graduate program after that.

TMH: What was it about Chado that drew you?
K: It was a good fit for me at that particular time. I had studied various martial art forms which always seemed to have a strong focus on Zen practice. Tea seemed to be a natural progression in deepening my studies of mindfulness… not just how to sit and meditate, but also to be active and be in a state of mindfulness. Also the Tea sweets were delicious! What else was there? I think because Chado encapsulates almost all Japanese traditional arts and crafts as well as history, architecture, poetry… boy, you name it! I knew this was a path that would continue far into my older age.

TMH: So the essence of Chado is meditation in action. Is that what you would say?
K: In a way it can be called a “soft” martial art. The focus for the first 10 years is on learning and strictly adhering to the forms, and then for the next 10 years or so, you break from the forms, and then for the next 10 years you return to the forms but with a different, deeper understanding. By sticking to the form you lose your sense of individuality, but then you find the freedom within that.

They used to do so-called Tea Ceremonies in China over a 1000 years ago as Tea offerings to the Buddha. About 500 years ago, a Japanese Tea master decided that instead of offering Tea to the Buddha in a Buddhist temple, he would offer Tea to the Buddha nature in his colleagues, to bring it more to a personal level. Chado, which I study, has the element of offering Tea to another person. So we don’t call it Tea ceremony, it’s the Way of Tea or Chado… you know, like Judo or Aikido… Cha is Tea, Do is Dao or The Way.

TMH: And how is it different from Vipassana practice?
K: When we studied Zen, we had to sit a lot and do sesshin, or silent retreats, in Zen temples. Our school of Tea is associated with the Rinzai sect of Zen and our main temple is Daitokuji which is a Zen temple in Kyoto. When we would practice, it was sitting, sitting… sometimes 3 hours, sometimes 1 hour… sitting in silence. Once a week, we’d be able to meet with the roshi or teacher who would sometimes give us a koan, sometimes not. The focus is on the form of sitting and breaking through attachments, working with the pain, working with the sweat dripping down my face… I can’t move… so a lot of working with that edge.

I find Vipassana has more interaction with the teacher than my experience with Zen in Japan, where the focus was on sit sit sit! In Vipassana, there’s sitting, there’s walking, there’s Dhamma talks, meetings with the teacher… it feels different.

TMH: You teach the Way of Tea to people. Would you talk a little bit about that, please?
K: After receiving training, my husband and I were posted to Washington DC for 6 years as official representatives… to run the mid Atlantic branch of Urasenke Foundation. We taught pretty much 6 days a week, from 9 in the morning to 9 at night. On the 7th day, because Washington DC is such a multicultural area, we were often called upon to do Tea presentations. My husband would give a mini lecture with slides, I would make Tea while he explained what I was doing, and then we would serve everybody Tea.

TMH: So like at embassies?
K: Yes, embassies, Smithsonian Freer Gallery, schools, government agencies, women’s groups, men’s groups… we were fully immersed in the dissemination of Tea and the Way of Tea. And that continues today. Obviously, I’m not teaching full time any more, but I teach maybe once a month here in northern New Mexico. We have a Tea association called Chado New Mexico or Urasenke New Mexico, and we are one of 88 Urasenke Tea associations spread over 34 countries around the world.

TMH: Is there anything else that you want to say?
K: Yes! I often tell people that my job with the Hermitage is my sanity. I’m so grateful. Being in this job requires me to work with my own issues… there are constant opportunities to practice. It’s great to have a guiding teacher like Marcia Rose who is very kind and generous and patient.

TMH: Well, that’s all so interesting! Thank you so much for sharing this.