Paper short abstract:

Practitioners acquire a bodily/mental discipline, which is derived from Zen Buddhism. Zen Buddhism believes that enlightenment emerges through the status of mu (emptiness) and practitioners are trained to keep their minds empty.　 Some practitioners view chado as a healing process of mental depression.

Paper long abstract:

Chado is known as a Japanese traditional art form and many women practice chado in Japan. Based on my fieldwork in Akita city, Japan, I argue that chado is used as a cure for mental depression for women. At practitioners' keiko (daily practice), they practice temae (tea procedure) and through temae, practitioners acquire bodily and mental discipline. This concept of bodily and mental discipline is derived from Zen Buddhism. Zen Buddhism believes that enlightenment emerges through the status of mu (emptiness or nothingness) and in chado, practitioners are trained to keep their minds empty. In this mu status, practitioners are not even allowed to think about the order of a tea procedure and teachers assert that this mental discipline only evolves through bodily discipline. Bodily discipline is obtained by repetition of keiko and this keiko emphasizes sensory experiences: practitioners have to imitate, repeat and remember temae not through their brain but through their body senses. Practitioners memorize the appropriate temperature of hot water through their skin, listen and memorize the sound of the boiling kettle through their ears. After acquiring this bodily discipline, practitioners can reach to their mental discipline: mu condition and on this mu status, practitioners become comfortable to control their emotion. By experiencing this bodily and mental control, some practitioners comment that chado helps to calm themselves in their mundane life and eventually improves their depressed condition. In chado, there is a connection between sensory experiences: bodily discipline and emotions/feelings: mental discipline, and these disciplines are strongly connected to therapeutic process.