Kokoro
and The Book of Tea
by Not Sure
10 May 2026
* This is an
illustration-heavy video with photos and videos embedded. To see those, please read the article on Substack.
https://cuttingthroughthematrix.substack.com/p/kokoro-and-the-book-of-tea
On the 8th of May, I received
a message from Jennifer in Slovenia who said, “Two new goat Babys
are born today. The smaller one got rejected by the goat mother. Now we try to
bottle feed it. It’s very small I hope it will survive!” She sent a video of
the little goat feeding on the bottle.
Jennifer is from Germany, but
now lives in Slovenia with her family, and they are approaching being able to
produce all the food that they need. She has opened her home up to like-minded
people who’ve visited and helped with chores. Helping, learning, giving,
sharing.
Helping, giving, and sharing
are words we use infrequently in an increasingly transactional system.
‘Learning’ takes a backseat to ‘studying;’ we often think of studying as
reading and taking courses, often to qualify for a degree or to add to
expertise in a field. Learning is part of the lifelong process of acquiring
knowledge, skills, and understanding through experience, observation,
instruction, and reflection. Sometimes Alan Watt would say, “You’re always
learning. Hopefully.”
This morning, I stopped with
the Redux preparation to do a personal errand. It was my intention to write
something when I returned, but I had nothing in mind, no inspiration. Just as I
was getting up from my desk to leave, I received notice of a message from
Jennifer. Friends had come to visit who were going to pitch in to help with
things. They’re experienced permaculture gardeners with knowledge to share, and
willing hands.
“The goat is doing better. He
was very weak yesterday and he refused to drink. Over the night he recovered
and now he is drinking well and jumping and calling out for us.” Jennifer
wrote, “My daughter found a beautiful name for him. He is Kokoro
now.” She sent another message to tell me what ‘kokoro’
means:
In Japanese, there are three
words for “heart”: shinzou, which refers to the
physical organ, ha-to, which is the Anglicized word for a love heart, and kokoro, which means… well, that’s more difficult to
explain.
“Kokoro is well understood in Japanese, but difficult
to explain in English,” says Yoshikawa Sakiko,
director of Kyoto University’s Kokoro Research
Center. Conceptually, it unites the notions of heart, mind, and spirit: It sees
these three elements as being indivisible from one other. “For example, if we
say, ‘She has a good kokoro,’ it means heart and
spirit and soul and mind all together.”
That was it! I would learn
about kokoro and I would write something about that,
and about the baby goat. “Is it okay if I use your name?” I asked Jennifer.
“Your location?” “The videos?” ‘Yes’ to all.
Jennifer wrote, “Kokoro is doing very well today! He is drinking and he is
strong enough to go out with me. We visited the other goats and I cleaned the
stable, he has to be there as much as possible so that he can integrate in the
herd later. Now, it’s too dangerous for him. But we will make the best out of
the situation. I will train him as a pack goat, and he can be a helper. This is
much needed!” She sent a picture of a pack goat and helper.
After reading a bit about the
word, and studying the character for kokoro, I
realized that it might not be so easy to write about kokoro.
I came upon the work of Professor Emeritus Kimiko Gunji,
a retired teacher of more than fifty years who has been a central figure in
introducing and teaching the concept of kokoro in the
West. To her, kokoro is a concept which is essential
in mastering the traditional Japanese arts of Ikebana (flower arranging,
“making flowers alive”), Chado (Japanese tea
ceremony, The Way of Tea), and calligraphy; all require disciplined practice to
achieve self-mastery.
Professor Gunji
has spent many years explaining the meaning of the word to students through
examples and quotes. The concept comes to life in all she does, but she finds
translating the word to be difficult, challenging, problematic, and concludes
that this is a word best not translated. In an article she wrote on the
subject, she quoted Kakuzo Okakura from his 1906
essay, The Book of Tea, p. 19.
“Translation is
always a treason, and as a Ming author observes, can at its best be only the
reverse side of a brocade, all the threads are there, but not the
subtlety of color or design.”
Gunji writes we should use the Japanese word ‘kokoro,’ but let us learn about it, and understand the
fullness of its meaning.
In Zen Buddhism, kokoro is essential for enlightenment. Kokoro
which is calm and disciplined brings clarity, and Zen practitioners focus on
stilling their kokoro through meditation, which makes
harmony between intellect and emotion.
Bushido is The Way of the
Samurai. Kokoro is a place where courage, loyalty,
and honor are developed. A warrior’s kokoro must be
unshaken in battle, which demonstrates self-discipline and an unshakeable
resolve.
Fortitude.
In Japan, even neuroscience
and psychology are influenced by kokoro. The West has
a mind-body ‘problem,’ but kokoro supports a
mind-body connection.
More reading about kokoro and I understand why the concept enters discussions
about how social harmony can be fostered. Western dualism separates the
rational mind and the emotional heart. Kokoro (心) represents a unified inner self where intellect,
emotion, spirit, and will converge. It is all of human experience, including
thoughts, feelings, and consciousness. It encompasses moral character.
“Emotions are not separate from logic but deeply intertwined with it; a
decision made with kokoro is both thoughtful and
heartfelt. The concept emphasizes sincerity and genuine connection (kokoro kara), prioritizing
authentic emotional resonance in interpersonal relationships over superficial
pleasantries. It also includes the capacity for empathy and compassion, where
understanding another’s kokoro involves reading
subtle, nonverbal cues to navigate social harmony.”
In this Redux from May 7,
2009, Alan Watt was talking with a caller about how our emotions are used
against us to divide us, and that we are being trained to become separated from
them. “They believe that pure reason should rule the world and overrule
human emotion or values…You must remember too, these characters brought in, what
they called the Age of Reason, and they wrote screeds and screeds of stuff,
about how reason would rule, and the reason they claimed that the world was
always in a mess was because people’s emotions ruled their lives for them. Well
you see, we are complete human beings with emotion. If we don’t have emotion,
we’re not a complete human being, we are a robot, basically, we’re robots.”
In retirement, Professor
Kumiko Gunji is involved in teaching and events at
Japan House in Chicago, Illinois.
Gunji recommends her students read “Tea Life, Tea
Mind,” which she describes as “a wonderful, concise, and informative book
by Sen Soshitsu XV, which teaches the reader about
selected artistic and philosophical tenets of chado,
the Japanese Way of Tea.”
The Westerner quickly surmises
that the traditional Japanese arts may be more holistically entwined than we
are accustomed to thinking about ‘arts’ or aesthetic expressions. It is less
about a thing that is made, or a product, or event, and more about the doing
of it.
Dō is The Way. It is a path, a journey, a road. Never
the end goal.
A dōjō
is The Place of The Way.
For those of you who enjoy
reading, I give you a neologism, readō, The Way
of Reading.
The quote about translation
being treason comes from Kakuzo Okakura’s 1906 essay,
The Book of Tea, and here’s an excerpt from that:
The Taoists relate that at the
great beginning of the No-Beginning, Spirit and Matter met in mortal combat. At
last the Yellow Emperor, the Sun of Heaven, triumphed
over Shuhyung, the demon of darkness and earth. The
Titan, in his death agony, struck his head against the solar vault and shivered
the blue dome of jade into fragments. The stars lost their nests, the moon
wandered aimlessly among the wild chasms of the night. In despair the Yellow
Emperor sought far and wide for the repairer of the Heavens. He had not to
search in vain. Out of the Eastern sea, rose a queen, the divine Niuka, horn-crowned and dragon-tailed, resplendent in her armour of fire. She welded the five-coloured
rainbow in her magic cauldron and rebuilt the Chinese sky. But it is also told
that Niuka forgot to fill two tiny crevices in the
blue firmament.
Thus began the dualism of love — two souls rolling
through space and never at rest until they join together to complete the
universe. Everyone has to build anew his sky of hope and peace. The heaven of
modern humanity is indeed shattered in the Cyclopean struggle for wealth and
power. The world is groping in the shadow of egotism and vulgarity. Knowledge
is bought through a bad conscience, benevolence practised
for the sake of utility. The East and West, like two dragons tossed in a sea of
ferment, in vain strive to regain the jewel of life. We need a Niuka again to repair the grand devastation; we await the
great go Avatar. Meanwhile, let us have a sip of tea.
The afternoon glow is
brightening the bamboos, the fountains are bubbling with delight, the sighing
of the pines is heard in our kettle. Let us dream of evanescence and linger in
the beautiful foolishness of things. The outsider may indeed wonder at this
seeming much ado about nothing. What a tempest in a teacup he will say. But
when we consider how small after all the cup of human enjoyment is, how soon
overflowed with tears, how easily drained to the dregs in our quenchless thirst
for infinity, we shall not blame ourselves for making so much of the teacup.
Mankind has done worse. In the worship of Bacchus, we have sacrificed too
freely; and we have even transfigured the gory image of Mars. Why not
consecrate ourselves to the queen of the Camelias, and
revel in the warm stream of sympathy that flows from her altar? In the liquid
amber within the ivory-porcelain, the initiated may touch the sweet reticence
of Confucius, the piquancy of Laotse, and the
ethereal aroma of Sakyamuni himself.
Those who cannot feel the
littleness of great things in themselves are apt to overlook the greatness of
little things in others.
Jennifer said, “He has a
bottle warmer now. It’s important that the milk has 39 degrees temperature.
Without the glove it cooled down too fast.”
On Mother’s Day,
for my mother, and all mothers. For women, and men, everywhere.
For Liam, whose
path is Zen Buddhism. I keep your Happy New Year 2025 card in sight,
“With an open
heart I draw my sword - TRUTH”
© Not Sure