🌿 Tea ritual at a temple— Tokyo, Japan

⛩ An invisible border

The morning dawned with a soft, almost pearly light when I crossed the wooden threshold of the small Zen temple. Tokyo was still throbbing a few streets away, but as soon as I stepped onto the first stretch of stone, I had the feeling of having crossed an invisible border, as if the outside world had been suspended behind me.

〰️ The garden was breathing slowly.
A gentle breeze stirred the leaves of the Japanese maple, and the sound of bamboo lapping at the water marked an ancient rhythm, a pulse that obeyed not clocks but the earth itself. The air held a faint scent of damp wood, and with each step, the silence grew clearer, more delicate, deeper.

○_○ The presence

She appeared from a side corridor, barefoot, dressed in a light-colored kimono whose folds seemed to float with her every movement. She didn't say her name, but it wasn't necessary: the way she bowed her head in greeting revealed the same serenity that dwells in temples that have witnessed centuries. Her face, serene as a lake in winter, radiated a gentle authority, a wisdom that needed no explanation.

She invited us to follow her down a corridor of freshly brushed tatami mats. The room where the ritual would take place was small, intimate, bathed in light filtered through translucent shoji screens. Everything there had a purpose: the iron teapot rested on a low brazier; the ceramic bowls were aligned with almost musical precision; a small bouquet of wildflowers balanced the arrangement like a whisper of understated beauty.

The tea master knelt with the gentleness of one who knows every prayer hidden in the movement. Her hands, slender and slow, seemed to touch time itself. She spoke neither English nor Spanish, but it wasn't necessary: every gesture of hers was a universal language.

◯ Before drinking

The ritual began as music begins: with a silence that paves the way.
She took the bamboo spoon and touched the bowl with that rhythm that can't be imitated without years of discipline. The green matcha powder fell in a tiny, luminous swirl. The steam from the teapot rose in a thin line, almost a thread of light. And then, as the water and tea mingled, a fragile foam formed that seemed to hold within itself a moment of eternity.

When she placed the bowl in front of me, she didn't say anything. She simply looked at me with a calmness that only those who live in the present with absolute precision possess.
His gaze said, “Listen before you drink.”

And I listened.
I heard the garden breathing.
I heard the wood creak beneath my body.
I heard the sound of the water reminding me that everything flows, even that which stops for a moment.

◯ I took the bowl in my hands.
The ceramic was warm, with imperfections that resembled miniature landscapes. The aroma of the matcha was deep, vegetal, almost shadowy, as if the mountain had been ground into perfume. I closed my eyes. The first sip was thick, enveloping, full of a flavor unlike anything else: a balance between bitterness and sweetness that only exists when one is willing to pause.

The teacher smiled slightly, like someone acknowledging a shared secret.

〰️ A suspended time

Then came a brief moment of meditation. It wasn't an obligation, nor an instruction; it was rather the natural consequence of being there. Facing the garden, in that silence that doesn't weigh you down but liberates you, I felt that each sound had its own place: the wind, the water, my breathing, the distant footsteps of someone crossing the patio. Everything seemed to form part of the same inner landscape.

The ceremony ended without drama, without announcements, without an explicit closing.
The teacher simply bowed her head and time started moving again.

As I left the temple, Tokyo returned to its usual sounds: the hum of bicycles, hurried footsteps, the occasional distant announcement. But I carried with me something different, something subtle, almost invisible: the certainty of having experienced a moment suspended between worlds.
A memory as warm as the bowl in my hands.
A silent bridge between cultures, eras, and souls.
A small ritual that, without words, had said more than any story.