Lessons from a Tea Ceremony (Part 2): The Art of Mindful Leadership
How saying goodbye to a teacup taught me to honor life's endings
Two weeks ago in Kyoto, I said goodbye to a teacup. This week, I'm saying goodbye to our Fall Downshift cohort. Both moments have taught me that there's beauty in learning to honor what's ending and the importance of doing so through the lens of mindful leadership.
Last week, I wrote about how the tea ceremony revealed the long path of mastery. But as I stepped into the tea master's custom-built sanctuary—a room four years in the making—I discovered another truth waiting in the quiet. Sunlight filtered through paper screens onto pristine tatami mats, casting gentle shadows across cherry wood beams. In one corner, a single scroll and seasonal flower arrangement stood in elegant companionship. Here, in this space of intentional simplicity, I would learn how moments of farewell reveal beauty.
While the tea carries importance, the pottery held court with an elevated role. Each tea bowl has a "main side" with gorgeous art on it. The main side faces outward or inward, helping the host track where you are in the ceremony. The bowl begins facing inward for your viewing as the host sets it in front of you. You then turn it outward as you drink the earthy matcha within (men finish the tea in three sips, women finish in five sips). You return the main side inward and then sweep your gaze from right to left to admire the vessel. They make space for you to behold the art. My bowl was an autumn flower selected because it was in season– another subtle nod to nature and the changing of the seasons.
To complete the ceremony, you say "goodbye" to the cup and point it back to the host with a respectful bow. There's a profound nod to impermanence - the idea that this may be the last time you meet this cup. At first, I giggled at the idea of saying goodbye to a cup. Then, as I bid farewell to my drinking vessel, I felt an unexpected ripple of sadness. I may never visit Japan again with my aging parents. This would likely be the last time we have this experience as a family. Knowing that made the moment both precious and beautiful. This practice of honoring what’s fleeting has striking parallels to mindful leadership, where leaders recognize the transient nature of relationships and opportunities and act with intention and grace.
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In tea ceremony, they recognize 24 seasons rather than four. They swap out the bowls, decorations, and flowers in the tea room every two weeks. The hanging scroll illuminated in the corner and the fresh flowers arranged before it change to reflect these micro-seasonal shifts. Our Western 12-month calendar feels crude in comparison, missing nature's subtle blooms and bursts. The ability to adapt so fluidly to change mirrors the flexibility and presence that mindful leadership demands.
The Japanese have a specific word for this time of year: kōyō. It refers to the change of autumn leaves as the trees prepare for winter. I'm enamored with the honoring of this gorgeous transition with its own word. I remember driving through the tree-lined roads in Upstate New York with Steve, my Downshift co-facilitator. He pointed to the bouquet of green, yellow, red, and orange leaves surrounding us and said that if you watch closely, you can see the progress each week.
This lesson in impermanence echoes another goodbye - the conclusion of our latest Downshift decelerator program. When a participant asked what it felt like as a facilitator to have our 10-week journey come to an end, I felt a familiar hook in my heart. The pang of knowing I may not be physically with this group again. The wish that I could’ve done more, supported in other ways. I then feel my action-biased desire to implement feedback for the next program. Mindful leadership calls us to balance this desire to improve with the courage to simply sit with the sadness of endings.
I noticed how my experience went from my heart to my head. My instinct is to act, to close the gap, to avoid sadness. What if I paused before action? Perhaps sadness is simply truth-telling - a signal that we're losing something precious to us. Just as the tea ceremony teaches us to honor the temporary, maybe these endings deserve their own ritual of appreciation. In mindful leadership, pausing to reflect before moving forward creates space for deeper clarity and purpose.
Rather than rushing past the ending or trying to make it permanent, we can learn to appreciate these temporary communities for exactly what they are - fleeting constellations of connection that leave their mark on us precisely because they don't last forever. I’m so grateful for the relationships I’ve built in this program and the gifts of stories that others have shared with me. In the practice of mindful leadership, gratitude becomes a foundation for growth and meaningful impact.
There's wisdom in pausing to feel the weight of what's ending - not to hold onto it, but to feel the beauty of how much it mattered.