All our great tea-masters were students of Zen and attempted
to introduce the spirit of Zennism into the actualities of life.
Thus the room, like the other equipments of the tea-ceremony,
reflects many of the Zen doctrines. The size of the orthodox
tea-room, which is four mats and a half, or ten feet square,
is determined by a passage in the Sutra of Vikramadytia.
In that interesting work, Vikramadytia welcomes the Saint
Manjushiri and eighty-four thousand disciples of Buddha in
a room of this size,--an allegory based on the theory of the
non-existence of space to the truly enlightened. Again the
roji, the garden path which leads from the machiai to the
tea-room, signified the first stage of meditation,--the passage
into self-illumination. The roji was intended to break
connection with the outside world, and produce a fresh
sensation conducive to the full enjoyment of aestheticism in
the tea-room itself. One who has trodden this garden path
cannot fail to remember how his spirit, as he walked in the
twilight of evergreens over the regular irregularities of the
stepping stones, beneath which lay dried pine needles, and passed
beside the moss-covered granite lanterns, became uplifted above
ordinary thoughts. One may be in the midst of a city, and yet feel
as if he were in the forest far away from the dust and din of
civilisation. Great was the ingenuity displayed by the tea-masters
in producing these effects of serenity and purity. The nature of
the sensations to be aroused in passing through the roji differed
with different tea-masters. Some, like Rikiu, aimed at utter
loneliness, and claimed the secret of making a roji was contained
in the ancient ditty:
"I look beyond;/Flowers are not,/Nor tinted leaves./On the sea beach/
A solitary cottage stands/In the waning light/Of an autumn eve."