Kokoro and The Book of Tea

by Not Sure for Alan Watt Redux 262 "Scientific Indoctrination for People Persuasion"

by Not Sure

On the 8th of May, I received a message from Jennifer in Slovenia who said, “Two new goat Babys are born today. The smaller one got rejected by the goat mother. Now we try to bottle feed it. It’s very small I hope it will survive!” She sent a video of the little goat feeding on the bottle.

Jennifer is from Germany, but now lives in Slovenia with her family, and they are approaching being able to produce all the food that they need. She has opened her home up to like-minded people who’ve visited and helped with chores. Helping, learning, giving, sharing.

Helping, giving, and sharing are words we use infrequently in an increasingly transactional system. ‘Learning’ takes a backseat to ‘studying;’ we often think of studying as reading and taking courses, often to qualify for a degree or to add to expertise in a field. Learning is part of the lifelong process of acquiring knowledge, skills, and understanding through experience, observation, instruction, and reflection. Sometimes Alan Watt would say, “You’re always learning. Hopefully.”

This morning, I stopped with the Redux preparation to do a personal errand. It was my intention to write something when I returned, but I had nothing in mind, no inspiration. Just as I was getting up from my desk to leave, I received notice of a message from Jennifer. Friends had come to visit who were going to pitch in to help with things. They’re experienced permaculture gardeners with knowledge to share, and willing hands.

“The goat is doing better. He was very weak yesterday and he refused to drink. Over the night he recovered and now he is drinking well and jumping and calling out for us.” Jennifer wrote, “My daughter found a beautiful name for him. He is Kokoro now.” She sent another message to tell me what ‘kokoro’ means:

In Japanese, there are three words for “heart”: shinzou, which refers to the physical organ, ha-to, which is the Anglicized word for a love heart, and kokoro, which means… well, that’s more difficult to explain.

“Kokoro is well understood in Japanese, but difficult to explain in English,” says Yoshikawa Sakiko, director of Kyoto University’s Kokoro Research Center. Conceptually, it unites the notions of heart, mind, and spirit: It sees these three elements as being indivisible from one other. “For example, if we say, ‘She has a good kokoro,’ it means heart and spirit and soul and mind all together.”

Here is Kokoro today:

That was it! I would learn about kokoro and I would write something about that, and about the baby goat. “Is it okay if I use your name?” I asked Jennifer. “Your location?” “The videos?” ‘Yes’ to all.

Jennifer wrote, “Kokoro is doing very well today! He is drinking and he is strong enough to go out with me. We visited the other goats and I cleaned the stable, he has to be there as much as possible so that he can integrate in the herd later. Now, it’s too dangerous for him. But we will make the best out of the situation. I will train him as a pack goat, and he can be a helper. This is much needed!”

She sent a picture of a pack goat and helper:

After reading a bit about the word, and studying the character for kokoro, I realized that it might not be so easy to write about kokoro. I came upon the work of Professor Emeritus Kimiko Gunji, a retired teacher of more than fifty years who has been a central figure in introducing and teaching the concept of kokoro in the West. To her, kokoro is a concept which is essential in mastering the traditional Japanese arts of Ikebana (flower arranging, “making flowers alive”), Chado (Japanese tea ceremony, The Way of Tea), and calligraphy; all require disciplined practice to achieve self-mastery.

Professor Gunji has spent many years explaining the meaning of the word to students through examples and quotes. The concept comes to life in all she does, but she finds translating the word to be difficult, challenging, problematic, and concludes that this is a word best not translated. In an article she wrote on the subject, she quoted Kakuzo Okakura from his 1906 essay, The Book of Tea, p. 19.

“Translation is always a treason, and as a Ming author observes, can at its best be only the reverse side of a brocade, all the threads are there, but not the subtlety of color or design.”

Gunji writes we should use the Japanese word ‘kokoro,’ but let us learn about it, and understand the fullness of its meaning.

In Zen Buddhism, kokoro is essential for enlightenment. Kokoro which is calm and disciplined brings clarity, and Zen practitioners focus on stilling their kokoro through meditation, which makes harmony between intellect and emotion.

Bushido is The Way of the Samurai. Kokoro is a place where courage, loyalty, and honor are developed. A warrior’s kokoro must be unshaken in battle, which demonstrates self-discipline and an unshakeable resolve.

Fortitude.

In Japan, even neuroscience and psychology are influenced by kokoro. The West has a mind-body ‘problem,’ but kokoro supports a mind-body connection.

More reading about kokoro and I understand why the concept enters discussions about how social harmony can be fostered. Western dualism separates the rational mind and the emotional heart. Kokoro (心) represents a unified inner self where intellect, emotion, spirit, and will converge. It is all of human experience, including thoughts, feelings, and consciousness. It encompasses moral character. “Emotions are not separate from logic but deeply intertwined with it; a decision made with kokoro is both thoughtful and heartfelt. The concept emphasizes sincerity and genuine connection (kokoro kara), prioritizing authentic emotional resonance in interpersonal relationships over superficial pleasantries. It also includes the capacity for empathy and compassion, where understanding another’s kokoro involves reading subtle, nonverbal cues to navigate social harmony.”

In this Redux from May 7, 2009, Alan Watt was talking with a caller about how our emotions are used against us to divide us, and that we are being trained to become separated from them. “They believe that pure reason should rule the world and overrule human emotion or values…You must remember too, these characters brought in, what they called the Age of Reason, and they wrote screeds and screeds of stuff, about how reason would rule, and the reason they claimed that the world was always in a mess was because people’s emotions ruled their lives for them. Well you see, we are complete human beings with emotion. If we don’t have emotion, we’re not a complete human being, we are a robot, basically, we’re robots.”

In retirement, Professor Kumiko Gunji is involved in teaching and events at Japan House in Chicago, Illinois.

Japan House - What is Kokoro?

Gunji recommends her students read “Tea Life, Tea Mind,” which she describes as “a wonderful, concise, and informative book by Sen Soshitsu XV, which teaches the reader about selected artistic and philosophical tenets of chado, the Japanese Way of Tea.”

The Westerner quickly surmises that the traditional Japanese arts may be more holistically entwined than we are accustomed to thinking about ‘arts’ or aesthetic expressions. It is less about a thing that is made, or a product, or event, and more about the doing of it.

Dō is The Way. It is a path, a journey, a road. Never the end goal.

A dōjō is The Place of The Way.

• judō, the gentle way

• kendō, the way of the sword

• shodō, calligraphy

• sadō, the way of tea

• and kadō, flower arrangement

For those of you who enjoy reading, I give you a neologism, readō, The Way of Reading.

The quote about translation being treason comes from Kakuzo Okakura’s 1906 essay, The Book of Tea, and here’s an excerpt from that:

The Taoists relate that at the great beginning of the No-Beginning, Spirit and Matter met in mortal combat. At last the Yellow Emperor, the Sun of Heaven, triumphed over Shuhyung, the demon of darkness and earth. The Titan, in his death agony, struck his head against the solar vault and shivered the blue dome of jade into fragments. The stars lost their nests, the moon wandered aimlessly among the wild chasms of the night. In despair the Yellow Emperor sought far and wide for the repairer of the Heavens. He had not to search in vain. Out of the Eastern sea, rose a queen, the divine Niuka, horn-crowned and dragon-tailed, resplendent in her armour of fire. She welded the five-coloured rainbow in her magic cauldron and rebuilt the Chinese sky. But it is also told that Niuka forgot to fill two tiny crevices in the blue firmament.

Thus began the dualism of love — two souls rolling through space and never at rest until they join together to complete the universe. Everyone has to build anew his sky of hope and peace. The heaven of modern humanity is indeed shattered in the Cyclopean struggle for wealth and power. The world is groping in the shadow of egotism and vulgarity. Knowledge is bought through a bad conscience, benevolence practised for the sake of utility. The East and West, like two dragons tossed in a sea of ferment, in vain strive to regain the jewel of life. We need a Niuka again to repair the grand devastation; we await the great god Avatar. Meanwhile, let us have a sip of tea.

The afternoon glow is brightening the bamboos, the fountains are bubbling with delight, the sighing of the pines is heard in our kettle. Let us dream of evanescence and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things. The outsider may indeed wonder at this seeming much ado about nothing. What a tempest in a teacup he will say. But when we consider how small after all the cup of human enjoyment is, how soon overflowed with tears, how easily drained to the dregs in our quenchless thirst for infinity, we shall not blame ourselves for making so much of the tea-cup. Mankind has done worse. In the worship of Bacchus, we have sacrificed too freely; and we have even transfigured the gory image of Mars. Why not consecrate ourselves to the queen of the Camelias, and revel in the warm stream of sympathy that flows from her altar? In the liquid amber within the ivory-porcelain, the initiated may touch the sweet reticence of Confucius, the piquancy of Laotse, and the ethereal aroma of Sakyamuni himself.

Those who cannot feel the littleness of great things in themselves are apt to overlook the greatness of little things in others.

Jennifer said, “He has a bottle warmer now. It’s important that the milk has 39 degrees temperature. Without the glove it cooled down too fast.”

On Mother’s Day, for my mother, and all mothers. For women, and men, everywhere.

For Liam, whose path is Zen Buddhism. I keep your Happy New Year 2025 card in sight,

“With an open heart I draw my sword - TRUTH”

© Not Sure