Chinese tea ceremony can be called the philosophy of beauty, and its roots can be traced back to the pre-Qin and Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties. In what aspects are tea ceremony aesthetics reflected? Below are the manifestations of tea ceremony aesthetics that I have carefully compiled for you. Let’s take a look. The embodiment of tea ceremony aesthetics
1. Calmness and calmness
Chinese tea ceremony believes that tea ceremony is the way of humanity. The beauty of tea ceremony is first of all the beauty of people. Chinese tea art is demonstrated by art. The first thing to be expressed in tea art is the beauty of the tea person's body, manners, charm and soul. The most outstanding one is the charm and beauty that expresses the calmness and calmness of tea people. In the long-term and regular practice of tea art, tea people cultivate themselves with the help of the "Five Adjustments" of Buddhist practice (adjusting the body, adjusting the breath, adjusting the mind, adjusting the food, and adjusting the sleep).
Body adjustment: Tea drinkers are required to sit as they should, stand as they should, and walk as they should during the tea ceremony. For example, your sitting posture should be upright, your waist and neck should be straight, your muscles and muscles should be relaxed, your eyes should be peaceful, your expression should be confident, your behavior should be calm, and you should be courteous to others. Tea art performance is an emotional exchange between people. The performer's expression and behavior are the expression of his inner emotions and inner qualities, so strict requirements should be followed in daily training.
Breathing adjustment: Breathing should be light and even, not rough, not panting, not rapid, and not disordered.
Adjust the mind: Eliminate distracting thoughts and interference, so that the mind is not distracted (not thinking about things that have nothing to do with tea), not floating (not restless), not sinking (not lethargic and listless), to achieve Quiet and ethereal, leisurely and peaceful.
Food adjustment: Pay attention to eating in moderation and at the right time, eating with the appearance of eating, and not feeling hungry or full.
Adjust sleep: avoid snoozing, insomnia, and orderly work and rest.
Through the "Five Adjustments", tea drinkers can enter the realm of "Xin Zhai" and "Seat Forgetfulness", and gain the cultivation and perfection of personality such as great wisdom, self-transcendence, clarity of mind and nature, and cultivation of sentiments. It is characterized by calmness of mind, clear spirit, calm demeanor, detachment and open-mindedness, and elegant style.
2. Symmetry and unevenness
The combination of symmetry and unevenness? Symmetry? is a formal beauty rule that humans understand earlier and that is more commonly valued. From the perspective of material form, symmetry means that a line is used as the central axis and both sides of the central axis are equal. Symmetry has aesthetic properties such as quietness and stability, and can bring out the center position.
Unevenness is the aesthetic law advocated by Japanese tea ceremony. In Zen language, it can be explained as lawlessness, that is, there is no law. The Japanese tea ceremony community believes that perfect circles, squares and all symmetrical shapes lack beauty. Only uneven things can give people endless imagination.
Chinese tea art emphasizes the beauty of symmetry, but does not exclude the beauty of unevenness. On the contrary, Chinese tea people believe that the laws of nature can be expressed from the beauty of symmetry, and that people can develop more aesthetic associations from the beauty of unevenness. When used in combination, these two aesthetic laws can complement and complement each other. For example, the tea table in the tea room is made of the roots of a thousand-year-old tree and maintains the natural shape of the tree roots. The annual rings on the table top form a wonderful pattern like a heavenly seal and cloud brocade. The shape of the tea table and the pattern of the table top They are all equally beautiful. The exquisite teacups and teapots placed on the tea table show the beauty of symmetry. The geometric shape of the vase on the tea table is symmetrical, while the well-proportioned flower arrangements in the vase are uneven and beautiful. The combination of these symmetrical beauties and uneven beauties makes the beauty in the teahouse fascinating, endlessly varied, central, and not too messy. Symmetrical response reflects the overall beauty of coordination and unity; the movement of yin and yang becomes the rhythmic beauty of the changes in the art, harmonizing and contrasting, and unifying diversity. The dialectical thinking in the tea ceremony is all-encompassing and can be found everywhere.
3. Correspondence
"Book of Changes Qian": "The same voice corresponds to the same breath, and the same spirit responds to each other." The water is wet, the fire is dry, the clouds follow the dragon, and the wind follows the tiger. The saint works and all things can be seen. ?
It means that similar things react to each other.
It means that people with similar interests and opinions respond to each other and naturally combine together.
The word "ying" here originally means to respond or to ring. Later, Chinese classical aesthetics regarded "response" as an important rule of formal beauty, usually called "response" or "anaphora". Anaphora reflects the interdependence between things and has the function of coordination and unification. That is, through correspondence, various scattered elements of beauty can be organically integrated into a whole beauty. For example, the correspondence between flower arrangement, hanging paintings, couplets and the overall environment in the tea ceremony; the correspondence between background music, commentary and performance actions; the correspondence before and after the tea ceremony program arrangement, etc. Appropriate application of care is conducive to forming a colorful but not chaotic overall beauty.
IV. Repetition
The basic rule of aesthetic expression, repetition, also originates from "The Book of Changes". The hexagrams in "The Book of Changes" are composed of two basic elements: "Yin Yao" and "Yang Yao". The repeated appearance of Yin Yao and Yang Yao constitutes the sixty-four hexagrams, and the hexagram images of these sixty-four hexagrams themselves embody a kind of repetitive beauty.
For example, Qian, Kun, Zhen, Xun, Kan, Li, Liang, Dui, etc. From an aesthetic point of view, the repeated integrity is strong and gives people a neat and uniform aesthetic feeling. Facing a work of art with exquisite structure, a complete aesthetic experience cannot be completed at one time. It requires repeated observation and repeated experience.
There are always new discoveries every time. Repetition is not just repetition. Clever application of repetition can also deepen the theme and give people a sense of progressive beauty.
Reasonable application of repetition in background music, pattern decoration, programming, tea art movements, text explanations, etc. during tea art performances will not only prevent people from feeling monotonous, boring, and boring, but on the contrary, it can enhance the overall tea art. Beauty and rhythm.
5. Rhythm
Rhythm, as an aesthetic expression law, originates from the movement and changes of the universe and the growth and development of life. Zong Baihua, a master of aesthetics, believes that "rhythm" is the basic symbol that connects Chinese people's life, personality, social system, artistic realm and cultural consciousness. This is obviously an imagination of the nation's soul and destiny, thus giving "rhythm" a special mission, that is, the final basis for expressing China's artistic realm and cultural consciousness. Musicians use the alternation of long and short notes and the repetition of strong and weak notes to create rhythm. Calligraphers and painters use the momentum of lines and image arrangements to express rhythm.
In the tea art performance, the background music, explanations, and movements should all be rhythmic. For example, tea people express the rhythm of movements through the mutual transformation of opposites such as yin and yang, hardness and softness, movement and stillness, opening and closing, coming and going, abundance and void, smooth and reverse, light and heavy, shade, speed and slowness, as well as continuous, discontinuous, repeated and other changes. Use the pitch, severity, urgency, cadence, and pauses of your voice and intonation to express the rhythm of your explanation.
A rhythm formed by adding a certain emotional color to the rhythm. Rhythm can give people more interest, move people's hearts, and satisfy people's spiritual enjoyment. Chinese tea art pays special attention to rhythm, which is extremely beautiful, and fully demonstrates the inherent beauty of tea ceremony and the artistic beauty of tea art through the vividness of rhythm.
6. Simplicity
"The Book of Changes" says: "Qian is easy to understand, Kun is able to be simple." If it is easy, it is easy to know, and if it is simple, it is easy to understand. ?Lao-Zhuang aesthetics believes that simplicity and no one in the world can compete with it for beauty. Lu Yu also emphasized in the "Tea Classic": "Tea is a drink that is most suitable for people who are thrifty and virtuous." ?
Walking in simplicity and leisurely, and the beauty with profound and infinite taste is the ultimate beauty. This is what Confucian aesthetics believes: Great happiness must be easy, and great rituals must be simple. ?
Since ancient times, China has had a loud sound, a loud sound, and an invisible elephant. ? argument. Chinese people have an aesthetic sentiment that the intangible is better than the tangible. Simplicity and simplicity are not only in line with the foundation of the tea ceremony, but also in line with the pursuit of beauty by most Chinese intellectuals. During the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, Zheng Banqiao, one of the Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou, was fond of tea and good at painting. The bamboo branches he painted were tall and straight, elegant in style, simple and uncluttered, full of charm, and were regarded as unique by later generations. Cutting away the redundant and leaving the leanness is Zheng Banqiao's profound understanding of the beauty of simplicity in Chinese classical aesthetics.
Chinese tea art places special emphasis on simplicity and beauty.
Jane in Chinese tea art means no unnecessary furnishings, no unnecessary accessories, no unnecessary actions, and no unnecessary words. The expression of plainness is that there is no heavy makeup, no gold and wrong colors, but it is pure and refined, simple and elegant, and indifferent.
7. Harmony and Contrast
These are two states that reflect the contradictions of things.
Reconciliation is seeking common ground, contrasting is reserving differences. Harmony is the juxtaposition and connection of two close things. The application of harmony and contrast in tea art performances is not limited to color, but also manifested in sound, texture, image and other aspects. A bamboo tea tray is placed on the root-carved tea table. Wood and bamboo are in harmony in texture. A rough and simple purple clay pot is placed on the bamboo tea tray with several fine white porcelain tea cups. There is a contrast in texture and image between pot and cup and pot and tea tray. Without coordination, everything looks messy and harsh. On the contrary, if there is no contrast, everything will appear dull and lack vitality. Therefore, harmony and contrast are indispensable techniques in the aesthetic expression of Chinese tea art.
8. Elegance and mystery
Elegance and mystery are the artistic conceptions pursued by Chinese tea art. Chinese tea people pursue nobility in personality and purity in temperament, which determines that they are destined to pursue aesthetic expressions characterized by purity and tranquility in tea art.
Purity is the beauty, which is often expressed in the tea art as the fragrance of the tea, the clarity of the water, the cleanliness of the utensils, the elegance of the environment, and the tranquility of the mind. During the tea ceremony, tea people use poems and paintings to assist the tea, in order to add elegance to the tea scene. The purpose of using tea to complement the music, chess, calligraphy and painting is to increase the happiness of the tea drinker. Using tea to satirize the world is to show the pride of tea people. Meeting friends over tea is a way to show a simple and refined friendship.
"Youxuan" is explained in Zen language as "bottomless", which means profound and unpredictable, and is expressed as implicit, meaningful and resistant to recall. The beauty of the mysterious is deeply connected with the spirit of Zen Buddhism. It is full of mysticism and is difficult to express and describe. It must be experienced with heart.
9. Diversity and unity
Laozi said: Tao gives birth to one, one gives birth to two, two gives birth to three, and three gives birth to all things. All things bear yin and embrace yang, and the energy is in harmony. ?Laozi’s theory of cosmogenesis is the theoretical basis for the aesthetic law of unity in diversity. "Three living things" are diverse, and "Qi Qi" believes that harmony is unity. The unity of diversity is the advanced rule of formal beauty in Chinese tea ceremony, and it is also the comprehensive expression of the beauty of tea art.
Chinese classical aesthetics believes that: "No sound is heard, and no object has any text." The "one" here refers to single or monotonous. A single sound cannot have the beauty of music, and naturally it is unheard (unpleasant). A single object cannot arouse visual beauty, and is naturally meaningless (unsightly). Chinese classical aesthetics not only emphasizes the diversity of beauty, but also emphasizes the unity of beauty, proposing harmony without difference, violation without violation. ?Harmonious but different? means that diversity should be harmonious and not appear the same. The most prominent expression in Chinese tea ceremony aesthetics is the purple clay teapot made in Yixing, which has different shapes of circles and squares. ?Under the hands of masters of pot art, simple geometric shapes such as circles and squares have ever-changing forms. The round and square pots they produce come in various shapes and styles, each with its own characteristics, making people never tire of it. Violation but not violation means that diversity should be unified in changes without appearing chaotic. To achieve harmony without difference, violation without violation, we should pay attention to two relationships in the unity of diversity: one is the master-slave relationship; the other is the generative relationship. The master-slave relationship means that among the many factors represented by the aesthetic requirements of tea art, there must be a center, so that there is a master and a subordinate. The germination relationship means that the many beautiful factors shown in tea art should be like a tree. The roots, trunk and leaves grow from the same root, and there is an inevitable internal connection of beauty.
Under the guidance of the law of diversity and unity, Chinese tea art has formed a rich and colorful whole, harmonious beauty, and all parts are subordinate to the whole. The charm of local beauty is revealed from the whole. At the same time, local beauty remains relatively independent in the overall beauty.
The environment of the tea ceremony
The tea ceremony is a tea ceremony carried out in a certain environment. The tea ceremony is particularly particular about the selection and creation of the environment. It aims to cultivate and purify people's soul through the environment. Therefore, it requires a person who is related to the tea ceremony. An environment consistent with activity requirements. The environment for tea ceremony activities is not arbitrary or casual, but carefully selected or created. There are three types of tea ceremony environments. One is the natural environment, such as among pines and under bamboos, beside springs and streams, and on rocks in the forest. The second is the man-made environment, such as monks' dormitories, pavilions, pavilions, waterside pavilions, study rooms and living rooms. The third is a special environment, that is, a tea room specially used for tea ceremony activities. The teahouse includes outdoor environment and indoor environment. The outdoor environment of the teahouse refers to the courtyard of the teahouse. The courtyard of the teahouse is often planted with evergreen plants and flowers such as green pines and bamboos. The indoor environment often includes hanging paintings, flower arrangements, bonsai, antiques, study room cleaning, etc. Especially hanging pictures and arranging flowers are essential. In short, the environment of the tea ceremony should be elegant and quiet, so that people can enter this environment, forget the worldly world, wash away the dust, and cultivate morality.