"tboft10" - читать интересную книгу автора (Okakura Kakuzo)

presence. It has permeated the elegance of noble boudoirs, and
entered the abode of the humble. Our peasants have learned
to arrange flowers, our meanest labourer to offer his
salutation to the rocks and waters. In our common parlance
we speak of the man "with no tea" in him, when he is
insusceptible to the serio-comic interests of the personal
drama. Again we stigmatise the untamed aesthete who,
regardless of the mundane tragedy, runs riot in the springtide
of emancipated emotions, as one "with too much tea" in him.

The outsider may indeed wonder at this seeming much ado
about nothing. What a tempest in a tea-cup! 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. The average Westerner, in his sleek complacency,
will see in the tea ceremony but another instance of the
thousand and one oddities which constitute the quaintness
and childishness of the East to him. He was wont to regard
Japan as barbarous while she indulged in the gentle arts of
peace: he calls her civilised since she began to commit
wholesale slaughter on Manchurian battlefields. Much
comment has been given lately to the Code of the Samurai,
--the Art of Death which makes our soldiers exult in self-
sacrifice; but scarcely any attention has been drawn to
Teaism, which represents so much of our Art of Life.
Fain would we remain barbarians, if our claim to civilisation
were to be based on the gruesome glory of war. Fain
would we await the time when due respect shall be paid to
our art and ideals.

When will the West understand, or try to understand, the
East? We Asiatics are often appalled by the curious web
of facts and fancies which has been woven concerning us.
We are pictured as living on the perfume of the lotus, if not
on mice and cockroaches. It is either impotent fanaticism or
else abject voluptuousness. Indian spirituality has been
derided as ignorance, Chinese sobriety as stupidity, Japanese