The Tea Ceremony

Murata Juko studied Zen at the Daitoku-ji with Ikkyu Sojun, and obtained from him as certificate of enlightenment a precious piece of calligraphy by the Zen master Engo. From that time the link between Zen and tea was established. After Juko, many tea masters practised Zen, and as time went by it became almost obligatory for them to do so.
Rikyu expounded tea to Nanbo Sokei in Sakai at the Shuun-an teahut. His words were recorded in the Nanpo Records (Nanpo-roku). In them, Rikyu states that the root of tea is veneration of the Buddhas. It would be too much to claim that Rikyu single-handedly put philosophy into tea ﾐ that had began before ﾐ but he studied Zen at the Daitoku-ji and the Nanshu-ji in Sakai for over thirty years, and penetrated its fundaments. His role in the history of tea spans both the utensils used and teaﾕs spiritual dimension.
Zen and tea were bound together financially by the role of the Sakai merchants. They rebuilt the Daitoku-ji and paid for repeated expansions. Although many of the Saikai merchants were get-rich-quick and quite nouveaux, their craving for deeper meaning is also apparent in their acts of partonage.