Publication Date:May 28, 2008 Shipping:Eligible for Super Saver Shipping Promotion:Save $5.00 when you spend $25.00 or more on Qualifying Items offered by Amazon.com. Enter code BMLSAVES at checkout.Terms and Conditions Availability:Usually ships in 24 hours
Poet, Zen Buddhist priest, renowned thinker, and seller of tea — Baisao was all of these things, as well as being a bit of an eccentric. Known to carry large wicker baskets filled with tea utensils through the streets and surrounding hills of Japan's capital, Baisao set up shop wherever he ended up and brewed tea for those who came to enjoy the scenery with him. Establishing a quiet, simple life, Baisao spent his final years composing poetry, brewing tea, and teaching Zen, in the process becoming a well-loved figure. These poems, memoirs, and letters tell us more about this endearing person and trace his long life's profound spiritual journey. This comprehensive translation includes nearly all of Baisao's writings, giving us a deep look at this remarkable man.
Customer Reviews:
"One sip, you wake forever from your worldly sleep."June 28, 2008 4 out of 4 found this review helpful
This strange, eccentric figure haunts the margins of any number of books I've read on a fairly wide variety of topics--Zen Buddhism, Japanese poetry, calligraphy, the tea ceremony, Edo period history. With his unusual name at once impersonally generic and straightforwardly descriptive, Baisao, the "Old Tea Seller" has popped up mysteriously again and again. Brief cameo appearances, frustratingly elusive. Until now. Now finally I was able to sit down and get to know the guy properly with this excellent volume focused exclusively on his life and poetry.
The book consists roughly of two parts. In the first part, Norman Waddell draws upon a wide variety of sources (including ones recently discovered) to painstakingly piece together the life of Baisao. What emerges is truly a fascinating tale of a man who starts out as a promising Obaku Zen monk and scholar in the heyday of the Tokugawa era only to toss all this aside, inspired by his own complex and uncompromising spirituality. Instead he makes his way through life by taking on the lowly job of selling tea here and there around Kyoto, his frugal and sincere life and oddly non-aligned religiosity making him a respected and beloved celebrity of sorts in the Old Capital. Through the lens of his biography too we learn much about the spread of Obaku Zen in Japan of the time, the vibrantly unorthodox--almost "beatnik"--cultural circles of Kyoto in a time of supposed feudal rigidity, and the development and popularization of sencha--what we usually picture when we think of Japanese green tea, of which Baisao was one of the key pioneers.
In the second part, Waddell allows Baisao to speak for himself through expertly-crafted translations of most of his known poems and some of his short prose works on the history of tea in Japan and such. Most of the poems are kanshi (in the format of classical Chinese poetry) and celebrate his semi-itinerant lifestyle, the glories and benefits both physical and spiritual of the tea he's peddling, and his close relationships with the painters, poets, and Zen monks of Kyoto. In tone they are as delightfully unpretentious as they are learned and imbued with an easily-overlooked depth. Full of the spirit of Zen but very much independent (even scornful in spots) of its organizational framework. Here is the voice of a man who with a nice hot cup of delicious tea turned on, tuned in, dropped out--and took both the good and the bad that came with that path with equanimity.
Accessibly written while buttressed with solid scholarship, this fine book also includes many illuminating illustrations, mainly portraits of Baisao and his distinctive tea equipment by artists such as Ike Taiga and Ito Jakuchu. All in all, then, it's a definitive treatment. If you've ever wondered who this wonderfully oddball guy is, what answers there are will be found here. And for anyone interested in Kyoto, Tokugawa cultural history, and the fringes of Zen Buddhism, this book will prove an eye-opener indeed. Highly recommended.
