Bodhidharma, the sixth century Indian priest who brought Buddhism to China, spent nine years facing a cave wall in meditation. Furious with his inability to stay awake, he is said to have ripped off his eyelids. On falling to the ground, they became tea plants. This legend suggests that tea's stimulating qualities were not lost on monks who spent long hours in meditation.
In 754, a Chinese monk named Chien Chen (Jp. Ganjin) accepted an invitation to come to Japan. He brought a variety of medicines with him which included tumeric, cloves, fennel, sandalwood, sugar, and tea seeds.
Tea was regarded strictly as a medicinal beverage. The small tea plantation which resulted from The Chinese monk's gift was managed by the Imperial officer in charge of medicines. Tea's use was strictly limited to the ceremonial and medicinal needs of the elite.
Tea was introduced to Japan a second time by the founder of the Rinzai Zen sect. Eisai was originally a monk of the Tendai sect. In China, however, he studied with the great Ch'an (the precursor of Zen in Japan) master, Lin-chi. On Eisai's return to Japan, he brought with him, not only a new kind of Buddhism, but tea seeds. Tradition says, he planted them in his garden in Hizen. Eisai also gave some seeds to his friend Myoe, who planted them at Kozanji temple at Togano, near Kyoto. The tea plants that flourished there became known as "hon,cha", the original tea.
Eisai was a firm believer in the health benefits of tea. Eisai also promoted a strict code of discipline for Japanese monastery life. The manner in which tea was prepared and shared among monks and temple patrons at memorial ceremonies and other important temple events was strictly regulated. Like most other parts of monastic life, tea ritual was based on the Chinese temple model.
It did not take long for the practice of drinking tea to spread from the religious elite to the secular upper classes. The court nobles prepared and drank tea with the same techniques and equipment as the monks. But, the secular elite added elements of entertainment, frivolity and conspicuous consumption. This worldly approach to Tea existed in tandem with temple ritual for the next several hundred years.
Advisor and tea master to the great warlords who unified Japan, Rikyu, a devotee of Rinzai Zen, sought to return tea to its spiritual foundation.
By emphasizing these principles, he firmly established the preparation of tea as a hoben, one of the many "skillful means" by which a practitioner of Zen might attain enlightenment.