Living with Tea Medicine - The Ninth Session: Fire

Having studied what composes the best leaves for brewing tea and what makes for the best water in brewing tea, now we turn our attention to the final basic ingredient for making the best tea: fire. And here is where I must humble myself before you and admit that, on my tea journey, I have not yet reached the pinnacle of this element in my own tea brewing: I have not yet had the chance to brew tea using a charcoal brazier of any kind. I can, however, vouch for the superiority of tea brewed with real fire from coals. Charcoal produces water that is somehow hotter and holds a very coherent structure when it hits the tongue. Tea melds right into this kind of water. The cups I have tasted brewed in this way are those that I myself seek to brew someday. Getting a chance to drink living tea steeped in Taiwanese mountain spring water boiled with charcoal heat by a tetsubin held by a hook hung over a brazier is one of the many profound reasons why one should pay a visit to the Tea Sage Hut sooner rather than later.

Yet instead of daydreaming about what tea could be somewhere far away and perfect, let's talk about what fire for tea has been, at least for me. My journey through various heat sources in my tea brewing improved over time as I learned the necessity of proper heat for various kinds of tea. I, like you perhaps, started with simple kitchen tea. For my first bowls of tea, I used my gas stove in the kitchen to boild water in glass kettle, heating filtered reverse osmosis water from my tap. Once I had heated the water on the stove to a full rolling boil, I moved the kettle over to my kitchen table and placed it on a trivet to sit. Drinking bowl tea, I let the heat dissipate bowl to bowl, the third bowl always being much cooler than the first. It took a while before I saw the many flaws of heating water in this way. I grew to love that very first bowl in lieu of the rest. In this way, my sessions always arced downwards on the scale of satisfaction.

Fortunately for me, after I graduated from three bowls of tea to start the day to longer sessions with better teas, I was forced to come up with a method of heating water where I sat. Running back and forth from my tea space to the kitchen quickly got old. I soon purchased an alcohol burner for use in my tea space. I started out optimistically, boiling my water from start to finish on the burner. Not knowing the proper use for these types of tools, which work primarily to keep water that has already been heated to a proper temperature continuously hot, I started every session with a 25 minute meditation as I waited no less than that for the water to finish boiling. This was good for my meditation and tea spirit, but not so good for my tea. My experience with water boiled slowly on a less than ideal heat source versus water boiled on a proper burner has shown that rapidly heated water wins out every time with better mouthfeel and qi. (Don't take my word for it! Do the experiment yourself!)

Months of heating my water in the kitchen while I sat mindfully in another room out of earshot of the kettle, guessing whether the water had finished boiling or not (and getting it wrong a lot once I bore witness to water gushing out all over the stove upon making it to the kitchen), grew laborious. On my first trip to Taiwan, I bought a electronically controlled infrared burner in Yingge, just like the one they use today in the kitchen at the Hut. It was the first thing I opened once I returned home, eager to start brewing tea with a proper initial heat source to compliment my alcohol burner. However, what I found was disappointing: the gurgle of the fish tanks at the Hut concealed a fatal flaw of this particular model of burner - a loud fan. I took it apart to tried to fix it, thinking I might replace the fan, but this proved beyond my skills. The whirling of the fan greatly detracted from my tea sessions. I quickly concluded that I needed a replacement.

My Tea brother Jasper (Jing Ren) had figured out how to incorporate a certain brand of off-the-shelf infrared burner into a wooden enclosure with a knob for temperature control, all with silent passive cooling; but alas, he was out of stock (and still is!). So I did some Amazon research and ended up with a nice Narita burner, all shiny and metal, perfect for a living tea aesthetic (not!). It annoyingly had a "feature" whereby it would turn off upon reaching a certain temperature in order to prevent the burning of food. My experience with the Yingge burner hadn't completely turned me off from opening the hood on these burners. This time, I was able to open the Narita unit and bypass this feature to obtain a steady constant high heat. I was left with a disabled temperature control knob and a voided warranty, but so far so good! It's been heating my water quickly and is as close as I can get to actual fire in my tea room as of right now. It's been going strong for over a year and I have no complaints. I think it makes good water for tea. I do hope Jing creates some more of his fine burners soon, though! Today, they use his burner at the Tea Sage Hut in the main tea room as a compliment to their charcoal braziers.

Let me describe in more detail the setup I now use and will continue to use until I graduate to charcoal. I have two clay kettles. If I am drinking tea by myself, one kettle is probably enough. In the event that I am serving tea, I will fill both before the start of the session. As I explained last post, I have a large water jar (complete with a taboo spout!) that sits next to where I serve tea in the tea room. Working alone, I can refill kettles if need be. The Narita burner quickly heats the water at the start of the session. After reaching its peak boil, I move it to an alcohol burner or directly to a trivet. I like the interim stage of setting the kettle on the alcohol burner, which give the tea some of the actual element of fire. During the session, I dance the kettle between the alcohol burner and the trivet, being mindful of maintaining consistent temperature and not allowing the water to overboil. This back-and-forth becomes a major part of my own practice while serving tea: having to manage water temperature keeps me alert and constantly aware of my surroundings. For me, it is a major element of "staying with the Tea", listening to what the tea needs at every steeping and being prepared as best as I can to respond to its needs. It is a great litmus test for my awareness, or lack thereof. As sessions draw to a close, caping off the alcohol burner with its metal burner cover is a sign that prepares my guests for the end of the session. The room grows quiets as the gentle hiss of the burner is silenced. Plain water is served. The fire is out.

A Life of Tea Practice: Fire

A 10 minute meditation on boiling water at the start of a tea session is one of the best ways to come into the tea space. This meditation requires one to become familiar with the stages heating water takes while on its journey towards a full boil. There are two means of determining boiling points: either with the eyes or with the ears. A glass kettle is very helpful when first learning about boiling points. Seeing the way bubbles form and at what rate they form is essential to gauging water temperature. At a later stage, you might find it more meditative to keep your eyes closed and instead listen for the sound of the water's various boiling points. Different burners and kettles, even different surrounding environments, have different acoustic properties. Start by getting used to the equipment you have and learning its patterns. I am now well aquainted with the sound of a Lin's kettle boiling on a Narita infrared burner. I listen for different stages of the kettle's whistle. It grows with intensity until a point at which it rapidly becomes nearly silent. This is "dragon water", as far as water will ever need to go for any tea we brew.

Of course, not all teas wish to be brewed with "dragon water". Every tea has different needs. Even different brewing methods have different needs. Becoming aquainted with what each moment of brewing tea needs is the path of a Chajin!

Ask Yourself: Am I grateful for the basic gifts of life, like heat for warmth and cooking, or do I take them for granted?

I am an American living in an affluent suburban neighborhood. Of course I take the basic gifts of life for granted! But I feel very fortunate that I am becoming more and more aware of the incredible clockwork required to sustain my wonderful life here. I am part of a vast integrated web of activity amongst animals, plants, human beings, corporations: life itself. I could spend the rest of my life comtemplating the components of this web. As it is infinite in its complexity, sometimes my only recourse to understanding is to light the fire on my burner and set the kettle on its way to Tea, resting in the gratitude of simplicity.



This post concludes Book I of Tea Medicine.

Living with Tea Medicine - The Eighth Session: Water

Last post we started gathering the first of the three materials necessary for brewing healing, medicinal tea: leaves. Now let's turn our attention to the second: water. Like the sages of yore described in this chapter of Tea Medicine, "fulfilling the alchemy of Tea" with magical waters, gourds, and urns, we too are going to need our own toolkit. We can add as little or as much magic as we wish. I'll describe my own tools to start.

First things first, we are going to need to find a good, clean source of spring water. For many of us, this is simply unattainable around the geography in which we might find ourselves. For my part, I live in a suburban area within driving distance of mountains. Using resources online, albeit with some struggle, I have been able to find three sources so far, all a little under two hours away. Every experience I have had traveling to these places has been rewarding and challenging for me, but the spectacular difference these waters make on my tea brewing makes it worth it, and for some teas in my view, necessary. So with a map to the potential sources and a car with ample room for bottles, I at least know where I am going.

From a local water shop, I purchased as many 5 gallon water bottles as my car can transport. I opted for glass carboys, as I have found with all things Tea, hand-crafted tea stuffs (including tea, of course!) made from natural materials win out every time. Anytime I have the option to avoid plastic, I take it! My (gas guzzling, air polluting) SUV can fit 16 bottles, but driving up and down a mountain with that many unprotected glass bottles could be disastrous. I found a company online that makes padded covers for carboys of all sizes. On one water gathering trip, on the last turn on the way back home, one of the bottles smacked into another one, causing all the water to pour out all over the car. Not Zen! With the cover in place, at least glass didn't fly everywhere. I have learned since to pack blankets between the bottles for extra protection as well as using bungee cords to secure the water bottles from bumping into each other. I use plastic lids for the bottles while traveling. Once home, I switch over to corks so the water can "breathe". I store them away from light in my (less than ideal) garage.

In use, I fill up a glass dispenser in my tea room before each session. I find that I am often serving tea without the aid of another and so for my purposes, I do use a spout conveniently located next to me for filling kettles without having to get up and greatly disturb the session. Preferably, I would keep my water in a clay or stoneware vessel that does not allow light in. I would also employ a scoop and skim water from the top to fill the kettle. As it is, the water I use does not generally have too much time to settle before it is served to guests, so I don't mind this compromise so much.

Another tool I use in the gathering of mountain spring water is intention. I start my trips with the strong intention that the water I gather will be used to serve the best tea I can to my guests and that my effort will help them all find their way to Tea. Setting off in this way makes it easy to stay present and conscious of the reason for my mission, and less guilty for expending the energy of a polluting car to make the trip.

Gathering water from far away places can make for a long day, but I always try my best to have the energy to unload the car at the end of the trip and have a tea session with the newly retrieved water. These sessions are a great reward to cap off all the hard work of the journey.

There are certain teas that, when brewed with filtered tap water, have the tendency to make my guests and I nauseous. I found that once I switched to brewing these teas with spring water, the tendency towards nausea went away almost immediately. Teas that before made me sick now rest on shelves as potent tea medicine. Because of this experience, I view gathering mountain spring water as indispensable for brewing medicinal tea.

A Life of Tea Practice: Water

One of the marvels of water is its ability to transmit Nature to us. The art of brewing tea is a testament to this! But what about the effect of human energy on the water? Above all other factors surrounding making and serving tea, the one I am most in awe of is the effect of the brewer on the tea. That water, somehow, can contain that which the brewer contains and be able to transmit these contents to another... There are no words.

Here's another experiment to add to Wu De's homework in Tea Medicine. Take a few months to become acquainted with a given tea. Commune with this tea on a regular basis, maybe even daily. As we serve tea to ourselves, we will find ourselves in various states of mind. See if you can discern the effect the mind you are carrying has on the tea on any given day. Pay attention to the thoughts you carry into the session and then what you get out of the session through its duration. After many days of this, you should be able to understand the qualities that the tea leaves impart to the water and that which perhaps you yourself are adding through your participation. Then, find another tea person in your life that you can share this same tea with and have them brew it and serve it to you. You may know someone who exhibits a unique air of wisdom about them; in that case, have tea with this person. Otherwise, pick anyone! Whoever you find, I can almost guarantee you will be floored by what you find another human does to the same basic leaves and water you've grown accustomed to.

Ask Yourself: How do I relate to the water within me? And without myself? Are they the same?

Asking these questions to myself is a very sad exercise. We are living in a world where we can't drink the water readily available to us coming from the tap, or the river, or the lake. Ubiquitous access to potable tap water around the world is a marvel of human engineering, yet chemicals unsafe for human consumption abound in all of it. I personally have the luxury of employing advanced filtration systems to my tap in order to safely bathe and drink the water I have available to my family, but what I have purchased and installed is far beyond the capacity that most can afford. My personal commitment to making sure that the water I contain within and the water that surrounds me in my daily life is free from pollutants is very strong, so I felt utterly compelled to invest in cleaning my tap water after educating myself to the various dangers (horrors?) contained within the water provided to me through municipal systems. I am glad that there is no longer a noticeable chlorine smell in the water we bathe and brush our teeth with, for sure! But I certainly feel saddened about all the hoops I've had to jump through to protect my family and doubly sad about the number of people in this world who have no recourse to this kind of technology.

What humanity at large is doing to our water supply on Earth is a hellish version of the story of the Japanese chajin burying precious spring water at the source of the Yodo river for the benefit of all. The number of atrocities committed daily that pollute our water sources far outweigh, by a staggering magnitude, acts of kind protection such as these. I myself, a person committed to clean water, am complicit in this very act of water pollution just by owning and operating a car.

Even if there were to be a large shift in consciousness at the local level about our municipal water and a demand for change, the political will required to change our ecosystems back to a quality where the water that falls from the sky is the very same water that we can safely drink goes far beyond the level of a city. We can't separate water at the local level from the environment at the global level. The air above my town doesn't have a border protecting it from the millions of people in the surrounding area contributing to the air pollution that makes it way into the water supply. Water is an orchestra of factors that cannot be separated from one another. I can strive to keep the water within myself as clean as I can and it still can't ever be clean unless we all commit to being clean within and without across the planet. I don't see this happening in my lifetime.

Living with Tea Medicine - The Seventh Session: Leaves

Let's review! We are human beings. The world we live in is sick. Since we are a part of this world, a part of us is also sick. Therefore, we need medicine, the one most conducive for a human being to get well. Our working hypothesis in Tea Medicine is that tea is the best medicine for this sickness. Our conclusion is, hopefully, that tea will make us well, which will therefore help the world become well. We've set our intention to perform the daily experiment of tea within our own bodies. We now need to gather the materials necessary for us to conduct it: leaves, water and heat. This chapter addresses the first of these, tea leaves.

By "leaves" we mean real leaves: pure, unadulterated, natural leaf growing wild in fertile earth. We will not pollute our experiment with any leaf that does not fit this criteria, otherwise we will not be giving the hypothesis a fair trial and we may become skeptical of the results if they don't approach our conclusion of wellness. So how do we go about finding leaves that match our criteria? Knowing that the world is sick and human beings within it are also potentially so, our best option is to find humans who have become well through tea who are able to provide us what we are looking for.

When looking out into the wide world to find the right leaves, you will encounter a spectrum of sensitivity. There are endless storefronts with the word "tea" in their names and countless boxes labeled "tea" lining the shelves of stores. A vast majority of these do not contain the "Tea" we are looking for. Maybe better put would be as Wu De has said: "She's in there somewhere." The import is that Tea is always in tea, but the sensitivity required on the production side was lacking that would bring Her out as She would want to be. On our side, we might be sensitive enough to find her in this weak medicine, but we'd likely be navigating through a lot of secondary negative qualities in the tea that are not likely conducive to our health. We do not want to jeopardize our scientific control (working only with living tea) in this experiment! Therefore we cannot always count on finding medicine in the mass of tea available to us through conventional channels.

Skillful searching on the Internet might lead us in more useful directions, but here we still put ourselves at the mercy of appearances. Our job isn't to weed out nefarious websites selling suspect teas, although of course we do have a chance of coming across bad players in the Wild West of online tea buying. I have found that for most part, online tea vendors are nice people who represent themselves honestly. What we must always bear in mind is that not all tea vendors have an interest in tea as medicine. Even those who are interested in tea as medicine don't only sell medicinal tea! In fact, the medicinal qualities of tea are very subjective and hard to define! In many ways, the healing properties of medicinal tea are impossible to describe in a paragraph. What heals us is not the flavor profile or the tea's particular terroir, although thankfully these come along for the ride. No, what primarily heals us is energy, or qi.

Yet before we go on a crazy quest to buy the tea that contains the most energy, let's review our current chapter. The first paragraph of this chapter's lesson describes a puzzling conundrum, one that is of great concern for a scientist looking for objectivity. To speak of the Qi of a Tea is confusing because "once you drink the Tea it's a part of you". So where is it? In my experience, I have not found pinpointing the location of this qi to be necessary for healing (or even good science!). You'll just know it when you feel it. You might not be able to properly describe it for another, and even if you can, something usually gets lost in translation. Here, objective science dissolves and the experiment becomes entirely personal. Did you really think Tea would want you to prove to the entire ailing world the one and only way for it to heal by way of your words? Tea seems to want its message disseminated in secret, pregnant silence.

We still haven't found our living tea yet. Both our own sensitivity and the depths of our own illness are determining factors for whether or not we'll find what we are looking for. Lest we feel overwhelmed, Tea Medicine has pointed the way as each chapter developed. Hopefully we have been willing participants in these sessions. Whether we were able to find and drink these same teas as we read or just imagined doing so, now is the time to make sure we know how we might acquire them. Here's a recap...

In our First Session, we drank old-growth puerh from Nannuo. Nannuo is a tea growing area in Xishuangbanna prefecture, Yunnan province, in the People's Republic of China. It is filled with many old tea gardens that meet our criteria for producing living tea!

In our Second Session, we drank some earthy aged puerh of unknown origin, but as all puerh comes from Yunnan, the birthplace of tea, we know at least that much.

In our Third Session, we drank some red tea, again from Yunnan. (I sense a theme developing here.) Red tea from Yunnan is called "Dian Hong", "Dian" meaning "Yunnan" and "Hong" meaning "Red".

In our Fourth Session, we drank the infamous Sun Moon Lake red tea from Taiwan, known now to members of Global Tea Hut as "Elevation", the only tea sent out to members every October!

In our Fifth Session, we drank a whisked green tea called matcha, prepared skillfully by a master. For our purpose of sourcing the right leaves for our experiment, let's leave this one alone, unless your fortune has you come across a master who can prepare this kind of tea for you.

In our Sixth Session, we drank Cliff Tea, oolong tea hand crafted on Wuyi Mountain in Fujian, China. As with matcha, we experienced this tea prepared with great skill and until we're ready to do that for ourselves, let's leave this one alone as well.

So here's what falls out of these sessions so far:

• For reasons of complexity, exclude powdered green tea and special oolongs for now.
• It's hard to go wrong with earthy puerh or red tea from Yunnan, prepared as leaves in a bowl or brewed in a sidehandle pot.
• A subscription to Global Tea Hut will get you some "Elevation" come October.

Finding sources for real, living tea is of paramount importance to healing. Knowing this, but also knowing that mixing profit with tea can adversely affect the relationship one has to its healing energy, Wu De has reluctantly but generously offered an assortment of teas for sale through the Global Tea Hut website. Availability is subject to change and usually these offerings are sold out within a couple of months. At the present time, there are 3 red and 3 puerh living teas available for sale. It should be noted that a) all the teas available for sale were either partially or fully donated to Global Tea Hut for them to offer to you and b) all proceeds go towards the building of a new tea school in Taiwan whose mission is to share the wisdom of living tea throughout the world. In our tradition, tea teachings are to remain as separate from tea transacting as much as is necessary to keep each side of the equation pure. If you've found Wu De as an author genuine and inspiring as you've worked through Tea Medicine, you'll surely have no problem using Global Tea Hut as a tea source when it presents itself, knowing where his heart is. I can assure you his intention in writing Tea Medicine was not to profit from an increase in Global Tea Hut subscriptions and tea sales!

A Life of Tea Practice: An invitation to Living Tea

A friend of mine once asked me: "So, should I basically just always buy whatever Global Tea Hut is selling?" My answer would be a resounding yes! I regularly support Global Tea Hut through my own subscription and through purchasing their annual tea offerings. I also invariably experience deep healing when I drink and commune with them. In more than one instance, I've had to ration what's left of certain tea cakes, having experienced a repeatable healing energy in them that I know will help others I come into contact with that might be suffering from very specific human illnesses. You, too, should have these same conversations so that you can become someone who has been deeply healed and then become someone capable of healing others through sharing tea.

Ask Yourself: How deeply do I feel like I am part of this world?

Alienation from this world is the fundamental illness. Living Tea breaks down the separation between self and other, and even subject and object. This must be experienced to be understood. It can be experienced through the sacrament of medicinal, living Tea. Make space for Her and be healed of separation and anxiety!

Living with Tea Medicine - The Sixth Session: The Spirit of Intention

 

Up until this chapter, I had been able to follow through on my commitment to blog every two to three weeks on Tea Medicine. Funny how once I got to the chapter on "Intention" that things would start falling apart! This chapter wasn't anything I could actually "relive"; I apparently skipped this one over on the first go-around and hadn't actually lived it at all! Having now tarried with it for a few weeks, I empathize much more with those who might say living the teaching of Tea Medicine is "too hard". It might just be the hardest thing you ever try to do in your life! If you take it seriously enough, it is your life!

Chapter 6, "The Spirit of Intention", contains the story of one of Wu De's students who had been changed deeply enough by the Way of Tea that she "quit her job to pursue her lifelong dream, reconciled her broken marriage so they could live in harmony; she became vegetarian, was meditating twice a day, and most importantly, she was happy!" Now this story is not a prescription for how to do Cha Dao right, yet this happens to be my own story as well. Things certainly started coming together after a couple of years practicing Cha Dao on a daily basis. However I must point out that although this story reads like a fairy tale with a happy ending, it has a hidden white lie: the nature of "pursuing a lifelong dream" is simply an intention, a mere begining, which does not necessarily flow fairytale-like, tea or no tea!

In Zen, there is the idea of "post-Satori practice": you've meditated your way into an awakening of the nature of reality, and while you might feel as if you've reached the peak, you quickly realize that now this realization has to be lived. It's quite sobering. Similiarly, Cha Dao will eventually take you to the top of the mountain, showing you a view of your life which is now situated as properly as it ever needed to be for you to find success, only to point out that you now have to climb down its craggy cliffs, with no other option but to engage yourself in that pesky task of "pursuing the lifelong dream"! All the old demons preventing you from manifesting your dream that were ever there are ever there still! Nothing fundamentally has changed. Mountains are still mountains. There is still self-doubt. There is still fear. But what might be different, fundamentally different, is that now your intention is to see the whole thing through, no matter how much it costs or how long it takes. And because Tea is now a part of living the dream, you might actually trust the process this time.

Even still, your mind knows you all too well. It knows your weaknesses, vulnerabilities and deepest fears. It can veil even the strongest determination. It is in this spirit that I'd like to introduce you to something that keeps me in the game, while my intention experiences its psychosomatic fits and starts: my Quan Yin altar.

Until I went to visit the Tea Sage Hut in Taiwan last year, my affinity for Quan Yin was basically non-existent. Long ago, I had to taken my spiritual knicknacks to the proverbial dumpster, proud to have overcome the rights and rituals that did little to help me in my life other than to build spiritual pride. But upon seeing Shen Su perform his pattern of mindful blessings around the Hut, I could see the kind of mind at work that I myself wanted: one that was able to supplicate itself to a higher power, knowing that higher power was both within and without. As soon as I returned from my trip, I established a Quan Yin altar in my own home. From the moment I placed the first stick of lit incense at Her feet, I set an intention that I would not miss lighting a stick of incense for even a single morning, barring not being at home. I did not set this intention in order to accomplish any particular goal, not as a prayer of supplication to this powerful deity who might take pity on me and bestow Her wish-fulfilling blessings upon me. No, this small act would be my own overt identification with my fundamental sanity. Lighting this incense, I could then say to myself that even if the day goes south for any reason, I was at least able to trust myself to do the simplest thing. If I couldn't maintain the practice of this simple act, how would I trust myself when things go really far south and I'm tempted to throw it all away again!

Even the strongest human mind is bound to go down every now and again! None of us would be here if we didn't have any buttons that needed pressing. Adding Quan Yin to this dire picture, a manifest repository for my intention of maintaining a stable mind, I have a ballast that commands only the smallest of payments to work. If I am lucky and my mind wakes up sharp and the house is calm that morning, I can spend some time lingering in prayer, which bolsters my intention with firm insurance. Knowing how precariously my mind sits between calm and disaster at any moment, it is bare minimum catastropic coverage with a very high deductable. Given that I have a family, I would be a fool to carry only that. I must therefore also keep my appointment with the kettle. After all, if this is the only insurance I am carrying, I better be making regular preventative trips to Dr. Tea.

In pursuit of one's dream, a protracted process that eats decades of one's life, the mind in its impatience chomps at the bit to take over and color everything over with its hopelessness. It doesn't have all the time in the world for you to work everything out as Nature intends! Once you've taken its bait of possible shortcuts, it strings you incessantly along, making all kinds of promises that "the solution is right around the corner". You follow his errant lead, thought and after thought, groping and searching for the way out. Does it every truly come?

A healthy mind in it for the long haul has its proper function. It allows you to become aware of the stillness that is the true genesis of its movement. If you can follow that thread and not be tempted by shortcuts, solutions appear like miracles. I am not advocating a lazy "thy will be done" type attitude! The struggle to free one's self from the confines of the running mind takes all of one's body and mind. After you pierce through into still awareness, you then have to maintain it continuously with the gentle effort of samadhi. Here the mind can suddenly and violently pull one back down under the rough water, like undertow, where you tumble around, gasping for air, again and again. As you toss and turn, keep feeling around in the wet dark for the Tea bowl! She will rescue you!

Recently, my life's dream of finishing a particular body of music was rekindled after I was asked to submit music for Global Tea Hut's August issue on Tea and Music. Via this offering, Tea led me to see that I had so much still to offer and all the right parameters in which to do so. I reengaged. Immediately, all the old obstacles reappeared. I fought through them all, my mind hammering me at every turn as it threw every old, depressed negative emotion it could my way. Yet every morning, incense was lit, tea was drunk, chores were managed. Every day, money was spent, experiments were undertaken, trials were made. Every evening, meditation persisted, plans were laid, varying qualities of sleep were had. Intention stayed fundamentally firm. It was not pleasant! It was not unpleasant, either!

When you make space for Tea and set Its intention forth, it will clear out all kinds of clutter and fill in the gaps with a high-energy awakened life. This awakening can feel so good! But your intention must not regress into drinking a beverage that makes you feel good that lets you sit around in a relaxing stupor, breathing in incense and flowers and admiring what a clean, polished life you now have. In a path of Tea service, to yourself and therefore to others, one must descend down from the mountain hut into the big, bad world and help see things along. These things includes your own hopes and dreams, which are not likely to fall away through the life of Tea but rather become more imperative for you to follow and achieve. This is where the Chajin meets the Road, and when the journey includes a travelling companion like the Mind, the same Mind that before Tea satori got in the way at every turn and created so many hardships and detours, the Mind that will still be there, lurking, waiting for your intention to become lax. Your job is to keep your intention firm every step of the way, to persist in the vow of keeping things clean and untarnished by this shortcut-pushing mind, no matter what happens.

A Life of Tea Practice: Making it sacred

Just like I made burning incense on an altar sacred in the way I needed it to be sacred, all spaces meant to invite Tea spirit must be made sacred by intention for them to light up. There is nothing inherently special about burning incense. Matter is consummed in heat, it's just a momentary chemical process. Yet for me, it holds so much power, the key to continuous practice towards success in life. Wu De says it is "important for the artist to be all that she hopes to convey." The truest artist attempts to be all they hope to convey at every moment, when things are easy and pleasant and when things are hard and uncomfortable. Tea doesn't rely on your interpretation of events being right in order to participate in making things sacrosanct, but it does rely on where your heart is.

Ask Yourself: Am I looking for fulfillment through my senses or am I centered in a fulfilled heart?

The mind wants to experience fulfillment through tasting fruits of action. It wants badly to taste these fruits. Yet many of us know that this very wanting is an obstacle to actually attaining our dreams. In a lifetime of engaging in dream fulfilling effort, doing it right means working so tirelessly in the moment-to-moment striving that when the fruit finally does arrive, there is no more ceremony at the end point than there would be at any other step along the way. The thought of future enjoyment is rendered inert. Unless one finds fulfillment moment-to-moment, through all the large and small tasks that must be worked through over the long haul, the heart cannot rest.

Living with Tea Medicine - The Fifth Session: The Great Connector Part III; Connection to Others

Calligraphy above Wu De's bed: ""In every breath, in every step, from the moment I wake till the moment I sleep, I am preparing tea."

Thus far in our journey through Tea Medicine we've worked on some excellent homework assignments that helped us grow closer to ourselves. We found a tea bowl to call our own and learned how to hold it with reverence. We started a tea practice, giving ourselves an entire week to center ourselves each morning with our new Friend. (I can only assume if you are reading this blog still, you've carried on past the first week!) Finally, we cultivated one of the Four Virtues of Tea, Tranquility, and deepened our practice still. Now from these humble beginnings, we are asked to serve tea to another!

If this homework already feels overwhelming, take the first step towards accomplishing it by calming down. No really, grab your bowl and some tea and serve yourself. First lesson in serving tea is that you are no good to anyone unless you are good yourself. In fact, that's one of Wu De's important tea service admonitions: "Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever pick up the kettle until your heart is still." This also applies when serving tea to yourself. Now can see you why we cultivated Tranquility before we began to practice serving others?

Now that you've calmed down a bit, there's another thing to point out about this homework. When you begin sharing with others, you'll start by serving leaves in a bowl with as little pretension as possible. You might tell your guest(s) about the homework you recently accomplished, drinking three bowls consumed in silence for a week first thing in the morning, and invite them to do the same with you one morning. You can only authentically show others what you yourself have experienced, right? Serving tea in this way to another does not require you to have any kind of mastery of tea preparation. Just be like the simple fisherman in the Rikyu story. Making a couple blunders in your first attempts to serve might actually be helpful. It's never wrong to be in humble service to Tea.

The silent tea space amplifies every action and thought. When we introduce silence into the sharing of tea, we are taking a step past tea as mere beverage and into Tea as Medicine. In this space, Tea doesn't kowtow to the superficial as readily as it might in other contexts. What is a simple kettle to your left hand when drinking tea leisurely by yourself can turn into a heavy, portentous weight when sitting across from another in silence. That might be the case even with a stilled heart! There is a certain responsibility required of the one serving in silence. In taking on this role, one becomes an important emissary of the Leaf. If this simple service is done right, with an open heart and a reverence for one's guest and the moment, the potential for transformation is great. You will quickly find that transformation works both ways, in both guest and host, almost invariably. I cannot recall there ever being a time I served my guests in which they experienced all the fun while I merely passed along the hot water. As Wu De writes, "Tea connects people and heals our differences." In Tea we're all equal participants and we get to experience whatever the Leaf is ready to pass along to each of us.

With this said, it's important to remember, especially as one starts serving to more and more people in different contexts, that Tea meets each of us where we are in that moment. Although there can be common lessons imparted by a particular tea to both host and guest, one cannot expect tea to produce consistent results in all. Asking a guest if they feel the energy or qualities of a tea in a particular way can lead to some awkward moments. Not everyone can feel Tea's energy and taste is highly subjective. Staying humble, staying non-judgmental, and perhaps staying silent might help prevent some unwanted blunders as you get comfortable in the role of serving others.

Although it might be hard to imagine now, there is every possibility that you will continue serving lots and lots of people as you progress on this path. After all, the tradition espoused in Tea Medicine is not a tradition of making tea, but rather serving Tea. Taking these first steps from self-orientation towards other-orientation is part and parcel of a life of Tea. Yet along the way, you might find yourself feeling far away from being a qualified servant, feeling less than capable of serving one's self, let alone serving anyone else. Life's turbulent nature has a way of putting even the most stable and carefree of us humans through the ringer from time to time. Having cultivated being other-oriented through a life of Tea for some time, you will find yourself able to bounce back from self-pity rather quickly. The suicidal tendency to throw it all away and give up, whatever it might be to you, diminishes. Tea itself helps one realize one's deep inherent value to humanity. A life of serving others, through which you truly serve yourself greatly, will help keep everyone moving forward on this grand journey through life. We all have so much we want to accomplish in the short amount of time we're given here on Earth. So if one random day you find yourself circling around inside your mind stuck on the couch in your own personal pity party, do whatever you can to pour yourself a stiff cup, get those dishes washed and those rugs vacuumed, and get ready to serve some Tea to your guests pronto!


A Life of Tea Practice: Serving Tea

Start serving the first person you think of that you suspect will be turned on by tea as much as you have been. Being "the friend that turned me onto Tea" is a wonderful title! Next, serve those that you live with. As you get more comfortable in the silent tea space, you might try and serve someone you're having issues with. Do your level best to let Tea reveal the solution to your guest (and yourself!) and not to use the tea session as an excuse to get things off your chest. You'll be pleasantly surprised with Tea's ability to turn a big "something" into nothing at all in no time.

Ask Yourself: Am I as giving and connected to others as I would like to be?

There are countless instances in Zen literature describing the dissolution of the barrier between self and other. I've been fortunate to experience this dissolution within a number of tea gatherings, but never to its ultimate, full extent. I am not qualified to talk about that at all! I say all this to point out that until that end is reached, there's always more giving and connecting to be done. Do your best to come out of the bondage of the idea of a self!

Living with Tea Medicine - The Fourth Session: The Great Connector Part II; Connection to Self

How we do anything is how we do everything, so do everything as if we are serving tea. So special these wise words are!

I feel so fortunate to have tasted Wu De's cooking! His cooking is just like his tea, transcendent and utterly satisfying. I feel so fortunate to have read so many of Wu De's wonderful words! His words are just like his tea, transcendent and utterly satisfying. It took experiencing just one tea, one meal, and one book from him to see that he was obviously someone who had figured himself out to a great extent. After imbibing this triptych of superlative tea, fulfilling food and wise words, I set out to change my own life accordingly, inspired by his example. Tea, food, and wisdom: what could be more fundamental to a happy life?

But wait a moment...

Hadn't I been cooking vegetarian meals for more than a decade? Hadn't I been writing my own style of introspective wisdom music since grade school? And although new to tea, wasn't I already finding great fulfillment in my own tea communion and service?

Yes! And no! Yes, I had developed these abilities to an extent. But just like the barrier that keeps one from fully understanding a Zen koan, wisdom that requires one's entire body and mind to understand, there was a very high wall between Mike the guy who did stuff because he knew intellectually it was good to do or simply because he had a desire to do so and Mike the guy who had become what he did. Here I will admit aspects where I had gone wrong in the past. My cooking often missed the mark - too spartan, too much oil, overcooked. Or how about the phase that had me unsustainably eating 100 bananas a week? When it came to music, how much music did I make that left me feeling that it was far from my best? How about that one album that cost so much time, money and energy and now languishes as something I cannot stand to listen to? And with tea, I can remember not too long ago leaving my kettle on the alcohol burner at all times because I thought the alcohol burner would do everything to regulate proper water temperature. And don't get me started on gongfu!

After reading my analysis of Mike in the past, you might conclude that I am being too hard on myself. Everyone goes through a process of refining themselves through a series of misguided attempts until they narrow in on what makes them hum, right? At this juncture in self-analysis, allow me to draw two slightly inaccurate but somewhat useful frames around myself that I'll call "Pre-Tea Mike" and "Post-Tea Mike". Pre-Tea Mike was utterly hard on himself. Nothing was ever good enough. Pre-Tea Mike expended tremendous amounts of energy trying to accomplish personal goals. He was always working on himself. Every day was another opportunity to push forward in an attempt to check items off a huge list of tasks, tasks that were required to be done in order to fulfill all the gifts he had been given in this life. Post-Tea Mike was saved from this Sisyphean horror. He learned to love himself just as he is, with all that stuff undone. He learned that he could be productive and accomplish a lot in a little time without having the feeling of being drained of energy. Post-Tea Mike worked hard at getting rid of himself. Would Pre-Tea Mike have gotten there eventually? Sadly, no. Pre-Tea Mike thought that there was somewhere to get. Post-Tea Mike knows he is already there and has realized and experienced that this is indeed the case.

It was in regular communion with Tea that I received a proper, natural connection to my best self. The mechanism by which this connection was brought about, in such a way that I could now divide myself between "pre" and "post", is perhaps a topic for another time. I can say that after years of properly striving with right effort, there was a sudden leap where in an instant I went through the wall into an entirely new me. And on the other side of this wall was a lot less me and a lot more Tea!

It is one thing to cultivate one's abilities within a life. It is another thing to cultivate a life within one's abilities, to become wisdom and then live that wisdom. This is the message of Chapter 4 of Tea Medicine. What kind of wisdom? In my case, the wisdom of Mikeology, where I am the only expert. And the chapter on Mikeology begins with "Did you do your homework this morning?" You might not know this at first, but the homework of drinking tea every day for a week is the start of a practice of connecting with your best self. The tea practice establishes the right conditions from which the best self can arise. Only Tea knows when the satori moment of the self is near. As a chajin, your job is simply to put one foot in front of the other and walk, tea kettle in hand.

Let me show you what cooking looks like for me now that I love myself and I interact with the kitchen as if I am serving Tea...

First thing always is bringing the meditative mind, calm and awake, into that which I am to start. I've done my sit and I've had my morning tea, having also passed through a simple breakfast and some cleaning. I have so much good continuous momentum to apply now in the kitchen, naturally. There I am, standing in the kitchen, tranquil, ready to bear witness to what is ready at hand, which in this case is lunch time. Ah! A can of chili beans! Ooh! A package of tempeh! A ha! A cookbook written by a fellow tea drinker! The basic ingredients and a helping hand and I'm about to start making tempeh chili for the family. I am mindful that the small children who will be eating this are the priority and they don't like pungent, hot things! My guests are the most important part of the equation. The cookbook gives me some nice guidelines, but soon I'm off on my own, fully trusting that I can put together something great with what we have at hand. I am fortunate to have previously applied my tea wisdom at the grocery store and the farmers market a few days earlier. What joyful experiences those outings were! What inertia I had to overcome to get in the car and go! Indeed! The farmers market corn is hiding in the back of the fridge. Let's start shucking! I set out a bowl for the husks and a bowl to wash the corn. I get a knife and lay it on top of a utensil holder. I get the water boiling in a large pot. Everything has its place, the chaxi is looking great and inspires me to work. Because of all the preparation and proper factors lining up together, this work is more like the play of a child. There's so much room for joy in the effort. Mindfulness is not something I have to do because a wise person said it was something I should do. Mindfulness is simply the state I hold: a mind full of nothing but exactly what I am naturally doing. I realize the tempeh wants to be steamed and that the peanut sauce I had been saving in the fridge for just this moment was calling out to me...

Bringing joy into the work and maintaining mindfulness does not mean that the work is always easy or distraction free. Difficulties are bound to come! Oh look, I am struggling to cut the corn with this slightly dulled knife that really needs to be sharpened. Too bad I forgot to bring the knife set to the kind mobile knife sharpening truck shopkeeper (yes, that exists somehow in my reality) at the farmers market because I wasn't mindful that when my calm and awake mind reminded me to turn the car around right as we set out on our journey and get the check that needed to be cashed at the bank, with children rambunctious and loud in the backseat, it was also reminding me to grab the knife set. I would see this only after it was too late to grab it. Now I am slightly suffering, albeit smilingly. It is so great that this is how things are playing out now. Yikes, my cell phone is ringing! Having been conditioned that a ringing phone is an urgent priority under any circumstance, I stop my process in the kitchen to run and get it. Drats! Telemarketer! And the water is boiling over onto the stove top! Oh my! Did I really just turn my back rudely on my tea guests, my chaxi, my joy, in heedless haste? Hadn't I been cultivating the habit of letting the phone ring until the proper time arrives to check on it? I forgive myself and start again, getting back to calm and awake and this kitchen tea session. Surely the food will still turn out well.

I can't speak for the food preparation methods of others. To some, it may sound inane, all these details about what are just normal activities we all do every day. Where's the Zen in that? Perhaps that is exactly what you have to ask yourself about your own life. Where is the Zen and Tea in your kitchen? Does it end up making it to the table? How would you know if it is there when you looked? There probably isn't a solid answer waiting in the wings. Do you like the taste of what you made? How did cooking feel? Can you tell that what you put into it is what you got out of it? If you cooked for others, what were their reactions? How did you feel after the meal when it came time to clean up? Was any point in the process, from cooking to eating to cleaning, better than any other? Was it enough? What's really going on?

A Life of Tea Practice: Tranquility

Wu De says "Tea wants us to be quiet". I will add to this. Tea wants us to be quiet because She has a lot to tell us! The problem is, we don't always want to do what it takes to ready ourselves to listen. Meditation is paramount to developing tranquility. Fortunately, tea has properties that bring about a state of mind that is naturally meditative, one through which you can let go of you so that you can be filled with Her. You in this case is anything you might be adding to your experience of the present moment with your mind, unnaturally, forcibly. Let the seeking mind go. Let the natural and spontaneous mind of Tea arise. Often this mind can be loud! And yet, you are still filled with tranquility and you listen. Can you find this state in your morning practice where you are very quiet and Tea is very loud?

Ask Yourself: What do I know about myself? Really, deeply know?

If you are anything like me, you'll find eventually that a huge stockpile of things you thought you knew about who you are turn out to be basically irrelevant to your potential for experiencing happiness. What you can truly know about yourself can only be found in your moment-to-moment experience of the ever-changing physical and mental flow of your life. Insight only arises here. Be here, with Tea, and find your own wisdom.

Living with Tea Medicine - The Third Session: The Great Connector Part I; Connection to Nature

Tea Medicine points us towards a life of harmony. Last chapter, we asked "Am I devoting enough energy to harmony?" If you answered "no", this chapter's homework shows us a way we can begin putting forth effort: a daily tea practice. One gives Tea a fair trial by dedicating oneself to a week of continuous morning tea practice. We start with a small, attainable commitment. The Buddha encouraged his followers to 'come and see' (ehipassiko) and then gave them a straightforward technique (breath awareness, or ten thousand other skillful means of bringing about awakening) to practice, something they could start without any prior training. We should approach Tea with the same simple spirit without preconceived notions. But in order to do this, like a good scientist we'll need to clear out all extraneous variables that might add to our experience of "just leaves and water" so that we can experience what Tea has to offer in its purest form. The list is short: you, a (treasured) bowl, some Sun Moon Lake red tea, the best spring water you can find heated to just under the boiling point, and a seat on the floor or at a table. That's it, save for any great friends who might be taking this great practice up alongside you. You'll drink no less than three bowls in silence and you will experience what it is to 'come and see'.

After my first week long trial with tea, I did not immediately become a convert. However I will say that it was easy to recognize that there was, somehow, more harmony in my life for that week. I wasn't immediately able to say that it was the tea itself that provided that. Even if you approach your tea as simply as I described above, there will still be other factors involved. Perhaps I felt more harmony because for the first time in a long time, I was taking some time in the morning to slow down and do almost nothing. As a meditator, I didn't substitute my practice for tea practice, so maybe it was my meditation time coupled with slowing down for a few extra minutes to have a nice warm beverage before breakfast that caused a subtle shift in my life. Maybe spending time with my wife (who made the trial with me) in the morning in silence gave us both a more calm disposition and aided in a creating a more pleasant morning home life for a week. And just maybe, tea itself contained harmonious properties. In the last analysis, there really isn't too much room for the pure scientist in this equation. We can't factor out all the variables and isolate the cause for harmony. In the end, it matters not. Tea was the confluence of all the causes together. If we look closely, we can see that this is the harmony!

As Wu De says in this chapter's introduction, "hard to believe that something as simple as some leaves in water could make such a difference, but you spend some time with it and things begin to sing to you." It wasn't too long until I heard the song of Tea in the tea itself, no question. Spending more and more time carving out calm, morning or evening and usually both, trying many different varieties of tea of different qualities, I quickly grasped that there was a language being spoken. Sometimes the language was rapid-fire and very exciting, driving ideas upon ideas that seemed to come from a deeply inspired place within. Sometimes the language was slow and long, almost thoughtless, a protracted sine wave humming in the air. Always there were accompanying sensations, again as varied as the language. I learned after some experience that there was a time and place for certain teas, but also that Tea invariably gives you what you need when you need it. Again, that's the harmony!

I also found a few teas that really resonated with me, coming into my life at the right place and the right time. I used these teas to great benefit. Encountering these teas made daily practice less a discipline and more a reason to jump out of bed and get the kettle brewing! What was the Tea going to tell me today? I would always approach these special teas with the same attitude: "It's not going to happen again this time, is it?" And almost always on the very first sip, I would incredulously hear Tea's subtle language speaking to me yet again. Through these resonant teas, Tea quickly became a good friend on the path. I was communing and connecting, every day. And now after some time at this, although I know there are some very rare and special teas with utterly unique qualities that are treasures, all living teas have something special of their own to offer and I love them all!

A Life of Tea Practice: A week of tea

Although both Tea Medicine and this post have given clear instruction by which to accomplish the homework of drinking tea every day for a week, I will add one more instruction to the mix: be reverent. Treat the tea as a sacrament. Wash your face, scrub your teeth with some salt, put on a comfortable, clean set of clothes, perhaps light a stick of incense, make sure your tea space is distraction free and then sit down feeling your level best. I firmly believe that this attitude of cleanliness encourages Tea to bring Her best back to you. Meet Her there.

Ask Yourself: What is my medicine?

At the end of the chapter, Wu De wonders if it is because we stopped taking our medicine that we've lost our feeling of harmony with Nature. I think the dark forces incessantly working against us, including our own minds, are nearly innumerable and without end, besetting every human being as a part of being human. Given this dire situation, we have to protect ourselves. I don't think it is wise to go it alone, medicine free, gritting one's teeth and mustering one's will at every turn. Accept help! Accept community! And most importantly, accept that taking medicine is a part of everyday life because life is a tenuous situation. Some time with Tea as Medicine will reveal the parameters of our situation. Perhaps Tea will reveal how much suffering there is in you. Perhaps Tea will reveal how much suffering there is in the world. And perhaps Tea will reveal the way out of suffering, too. We are in the midst of an ancient circumstance, no matter how modern and up-to-date we convince ourselves that we are. How lucky we are to have found the right medicine for the age old problem of life itself!