Zen the Tea—Read the Tea with Your Body
YI Ping Cha Xian– Mr. Yanfeng Li
“Normally when people talk about levels of appreciating tea, there are three levels: know the tea, taste the tea, Zen the tea. For the first level, it is about experience and knowledge on tea, in other words, it is “describing the tea”. The second level, it is about art and aesthetics, to make friends with tea, enjoy the companionship, enjoy the tea, enjoy the moment and the ambience. The third level is to understand the Tao of Tea, acknowledge and appreciate, each individual has his/her own understanding of Zen of Tea.
For many years, I have been loyal to the practice of Zen Tea, learning from others and taking it as a means of spiritual enlightenment. Our ancestors would say: taste the tea, you would know the path to health and enlightenment. People nowadays on top of tasting the tea, should put more attention to health, use your body to read the tea, use the tea to boost your health. So how do you taste, read and Zen the Tea? Read the explanation below on “Read The Tea With Your Body”.
Tranquillity yields transcendence, Zen Tea enlightens. Zen Tea promotes “quietness”. Sitting in a cosy elegant environment, tea drinkers keep silent in lotus sitting pose or meditate. Next, relax your body, obtain energy, wisdom and joy in the quietness. The person who serves the tea needs to be gentle, peaceful, positive, calm, focused to ensure full attention to the tea, using gentle tea serving method to achieve a communication between tea and people, the tea then shows its purest colour and taste.
The tea needs to be drank while served hot to experience “feel the taste, feel the Chi”. Let’s first talk about “taste”. It’s a process of physical sensation, this sensation can be manufactured or guided. If it’s a genuinely good tea, it benefits the tea drinker, it won’t feel harsh to the stomach, throat or any other part of the body. The taste experience can be guided, however, what the tea does inside of your body is true, hence what your body feels is more important than what your mouth tastes, pay attention to the sensations of your body. Secondly, Read the Tea With Your Body is key in “feeling the Chi”, transforming the tangible tea into your meridians in the formless tea Chi, penetrating to different parts of your body and allowing the sensations to surface. Normally, the strength of the Tea Chi can be determined by the magnitude of sensations it introduces. If the Tea Chi improves the body’s micro circulation, tea drinkers may feel hot Chi running through and steaming up in their body. Your pores are open with minor perspiration. You may burp, you may fart. After the tea session, you may feel that you have had a pleasant bath, feeling cosy, comfortable and relaxed. This is considered Tea with strong Chi. On the contrary, if nothing happens, it’s considered weak in Tea Chi. To make it simple, both the tea and the Chi flow through the throat to the stomach, form a hot steam in the stomach, and then travels down the lower abdomen and form hot energy there with turbulent motion. Then the Chi goes up like steam all the way to your head, and continues this process. Tea drinkers will need to give attention and feel this tea Chi. To most of the tea drinkers, Tea Chi is still a vague concept. Tea Chi is formless (like air), but it does exist. Experienced tea drinkers understand this. In daily life, people are so busy, their thoughts are constantly interrupted by their surroundings and will not travel far. However, if the person through Zen Tea or meditation, frees his mind from the daily chaos, his thoughts then can be reconnected with nature, more in harmony, more in the zone, and his thoughts would travel very far.
In recent years, tea gets more and more popular, the tea industry uses fertilisers and chemicals to boost the production and business, which damages the quality of the tea, making it harder to find high class Pu’er Tea that can pass the test of time. The only way to identify good quality tea is to read the tea with our bodies.
How do we determine whether the tea is good or bad? Let me give you an example: you may find some skinny unripe peach to taste, feel the astringent taste of the fruit, this astringent taste is similar to fresh green tea. The astringent taste will eventually melt away in your mouth. However, if the tea plant was treated with chemicals, pesticides, the astringent taste would be different from the astringent taste of a fresh fruit, it lasts for a long time and does not go away. From the medical point of view, tea promotes circulation, it comes from bitterness, and bitterness spreads, and the spreading drives motion in blood vessels, this means body Chi is unblocked. Tea promotes this micro circulation; hence tea has a unique role in keeping people healthy. From the culture perspective, Energy, Chi, Spirit are the roots of what Chinese culture is based upon, things like martial arts, TCM, philosophy and even fortune-telling and daily living, are all related to it directly or indirectly. To appreciate Chinese culture in depth and understand its development, Energy, Chi, Spirit should be the starting point. Hence Tea Chi is a natural part of tea. There are three Chi in tea: 1. Earth Chi, refers to the authentic taste of the tea, each location has its own unique tea. 2. Tea Chi, this is the energy brought by the tea itself, Tea Chi is just like the spirit of alcohol, aged alcohol carries strong aroma, likewise, tea with strong Chi would be properly aged tea. Improperly prepared tea, the Chi would evaporate away. Hence Chi is depending on the storage environment for aging and duration for oxidation, tea Chi also tells whether it is authentic or fake. Note that tea Chi is different from tea taste, its formless and abstract, you could only feel it with your body when given attention, while tea taste is literally from your mouth. 3. People Chi, refers to the energy aura formed by the group of tea drinkers gathered to enjoy this same tea. It is known that the tea is able to absorb smells from surrounding environment fast. People Chi differs with different group of people. As a result, for the same pot of tea, each individual experience different sensation, story, history, wisdom. The three Chi of tea is indeed conditioned to its favourable climactic geographical and human situation (right time, right place and right people).
Read the Tea with Your Body helps us quiet down our mind, grow our spirit, observe and experience oneself to achieve a harmonious state between oneself and the universe. Give full attention to Read the Tea with Your Body, and then you will understand the tea, understand yourself, understand the harmony of truth, the good and the beautiful, and to be the utmost truth, and the utmost goodness, and the utmost beautiful; I am the tea, and the tea is me; I am not the tea, the tea is not me; or connected seamlessly, all is one, into the bliss of emptiness. The ultimate goal of zen tea is to be enlightened, to be healthy. I wish all tea drinkers, when you taste tea and read tea, you can connect the dots of the Tao of Tea with Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism. Tea carries Zen, and Zen lives in tea, drink tea to help with your meditation, connect with your soul, experience total relaxation and bliss, to be fully enlightened, understand the true meaning of “the Oneness of Zen and Tea”.
(Article published in The 4th World Zen Tea Album, considered as the model of current zen tea cultivation practice)
With many years of studying tea, all the tea collected by Mr. Li are Pu’re tea from pure dry storage environment: year 2001-Yiwu, year 1993-Gold Melon, year1998-Red Stamp; year 1988-Gold Ball, year 78,68 and 50s- out of production Green Stamp and Paperless Red Stamp; year 40s- “Big” round cake; 40s- Tongxing and Henei; year 30s- Hong Tai Chang etc. Mr. Li gives out tea as charity, his sole purpose is to share good tea to promote health, and to educate people with the correct tea drinking knowledge.