Tea Wisdom
Check back regularly for a cup of wisdom, or add some of your own even.
This entry was posted
on Saturday, August 9th, 2008 at 12:18 pm and is filed under Issue 3.
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August 9th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
There is no definition of “tea”, not as a word and not as a concept. If you tell me it’s a bush, I’ll show you a tree. If you say it’s a beverage, I will point out the hundreds of years and generations of dedication that have gone into the art and pottery for its preparation. Then, you might say it is a time set aside for social discourse, at which point I would paint for you the Zen monk lost in meditation, the empty contents of his tea bowl coursing through his consciousness. What then is tea? It’s breadth leaves the definition in your hands. You define what tea means to you. Its very creation is affirming and intuitively manifest. You give your tea meaning, whether it be beverage or Dao, sublime or mundane. But before you do, remember that if you don’t give it meaning, it’s meaningless…
August 19th, 2008 at 1:05 am
In the modern world, as with tea, more is less and less is more. Seek out simplicity in yourself and your tea. In China and Japan both, tea masters worked hard to take tea out of the banquet and the decadence of the wealthy who treated it as just another flavor in their ever-expanding quest for sensual pleasure. After tea, they all too often turned to drink and other excess. This isn’t the source of tea, though; it comes, ultimately, from the quiet mountain, serene in the morning sun; it comes from the shamans, mendicants and later monks that passed steaming bowls, knowing that the Dao couldn’t be expressed in words or in silence. Perhaps through tea?
August 21st, 2008 at 4:59 am
A piece of teaware loses its grace and beauty when viewed with covetous eyes.
August 26th, 2008 at 7:04 am
Everything you need to know is poured within the cup, not splashed onto the table.
August 28th, 2008 at 4:22 am
A long, quiet night
The old iron kettle sighs
Telling all my thoughts
September 2nd, 2008 at 1:52 am
Did you bring the tea home only to find it wasn’t the same as it was when it was brewed in the shop? Did you mimic the master to no effect? And what of the monk who never studied tea, not ever. Why does his tea still taste so much richer than the old scholar whose cups are passed beneath pedantic speech?
September 8th, 2008 at 12:14 am
Take up a handful of tea leaves and turn them into a two-story, golden Buddha; take up a two-story, golden Buddha and turn it into a handful of tea leaves.
September 9th, 2008 at 5:20 am
Recipe for the alkahest:
One part wood into one part earth; stoke the fire and place the metal cauldron above, adding water from the the cool stream. When it boils, steep the wood in the earth to create a deep, dark brew that trembles with the power of the dragon hidden beneath its waters.
September 11th, 2008 at 4:53 am
This all applies equally to Van, tea and a tea session with Van:
Time + age = sage - Van is a growing and learning experience, a shy teacher, name and word dropper, weaving an invitation to explore the enigma. Van an odd, sage alchemist, using a mix of words and musical notes, like tinctures and powders, into a formula to send one on a journey. Yes, Van the eccentric alchemist who is versed in the practice of alchemy and has sought an elixir of life and a panacea and an alkahest and the philosopher’s stone.
Courtesy of my tea brother Glenn
September 13th, 2008 at 1:11 am
The tea’s story is in the cup, not written on the container or passed on by the vendor. After a sip, there’s nothing left to discuss.
September 16th, 2008 at 6:33 am
It is difficult to find the teacher when the students are up and about, talking loudly and confusing the classroom.
September 19th, 2008 at 6:14 am
“We are not in nature; we are nature. But as masters of technical weapons we are fighting the environment as if we still believed ourselves to be strangers on the earth, sent down into this world from a purely abstract, ideational and spiritual heaven. Oddly enough, people who call themselves naturalists and materialists are, when judged by their actions, the most devout abstractionists and the most dedicated violators of material.”
–Alan Watts–
September 26th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
There are great tea sessions occurring all over the world as you read this, and you are welcome at so many of them. Great teas are being brought down from secret shelves, jars and cans and being freely poured. The greatest teas in the world are always free. What are you doing to find them? As the person seeks the tea, the tea seeks the person. Open up and be willing to flow, and you’ll arrive.
October 2nd, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Drink tea