The interior of the tea room may feel cramped at first. Although the room is virtually bare, there seems little space left after the other guests have knelt about the central hearth. The room is in the _sukiya _style favored by Rikyu, with the walls a patchwork of dull plaster, raw wood, a few _shoji _rice-paper windows, and a small _tokonoma_ art alcove. The only decoration is a single object on the _tokonoma_ dais and the hanging scroll against the back wall. This impression of simple rusticity is deliberately deceptive, however, for the tea room is actually fashioned from the finest available woods and costs considerably more per unit area than the host's home. It is ironic that the sense of poverty and anti-materialism pervading the tea room can be achieved only at enormous expense, yet this deceit is one of the outstanding creations of Zen culture. The room and its psychological impact have been eloquently analyzed by the Zen scholar D. T. Suzuki. _ As I look around, in spite of its obvious simplicity the room betrays every mark of thoughtful designing: the windows are irregularly inserted; the ceiling is not of one pattern; the materials used, simple and un-ornamental . . . the floor has a small square opening where hot water is boiling in an artistically-shaped iron kettle. The papered _shoji_ covering the windows admit only soft light, shutting out direct sunshine. . . . As I sit here quietly before the fireplace, I become conscious of the burning of incense. The odor is singularly nerve soothing. . . . Thus composed in mind, I hear a soft breeze passing through the needle leaves of the pine tree; the sound mingles with the trickling of water from a bamboo pipe into the stone basin.1 _ The tea ceremony is intended to engage all the senses, soothing each in turn. As described by Suzuki, the organs of sight, hearing, and smell are all embraced even before the ceremony begins. The purpose, of course, is to create a feeling of harmony and tranquility conducive to the reverential spirit of the Zen sacrament. The surroundings massage your mind and adjust your attitude. This point is particularly stressed by Suzuki. _Where [tranquility] is lacking, the art will lose its significance altogether. . . . The massing of rocks, the trickling of water, the thatched hut, the old pine trees sheltering it, the moss-covered stone lantern, the sizzling of the kettle water, and the light softly filtering through the paper screens--all these are meant uniformly to create a meditative frame of mind.2 _