THE ART OF HAVING TEA (茶道)
Maggie H is a Global Explorer and Wellness Advocate from Hong Kong. Among many spiritual endeavors, Maggie practices and leads Qigong meditation to help people around the world find their inner balance. Find out more about this and other Eastern Philosophy & Meditation practices every month on the ICBRKR blog.
Any day that I have a relaxing afternoon tea time with good company is a good day. Boiling water, choosing tea and matching cups to go with it, adjusting the water temperature, pausing for a few minutes before enjoying a cup of hot tea over a pleasant conversation is a petit ritual and it does wonders in one’s life.
In the East, the act of having tea has transformed itself into an art form and so it is called the tea ceremony. At times, the focus on ceremonial formality is too heavy that the substance is often overlooked. So, I'd like to make a few comments on the philosophical part of tea drinking.
Let's look at the character 'cha 茶'. There is grass 艸 at the top, a person 人 in the middle and a tree 木 at the bottom.
The radical grass 艸 literally means leaves, flowers or roots of plants that are cured or freshened to make tea. It also means two 10s (十十, 10+10=20) which is 'smull' in Korean, deriving from smull-smull or ‘something that is creeping up’. A cup of tea can be an excellent remedy when thoughts and emotions creep up on the head.
The middle radical person 人 can also mean the number 8 八. 20+8 ( 十十 + 八) represents 28 constellations of 7 each in the four directions of the East, West, South and North that surround and influence the earth, also creating problems in life that make us act up.
The bottom radical tree 木 can be broken down as 十八 and it stands for 18. Our body has 6 sense organs: the eyes to see, the ears to hear, the nose to smell, the tongue to taste, the body to touch and the mind to think. When we clap, we hear the sound of clapping but the sound exists neither in the hands, the ears or in the space (the middle). The empty space is filled with all kinds of sounds and when the clapping takes place, we hear the sound through the ears. By that logic, the sound exists everywhere, in the hands, the ears and the space but it exists nowhere at the same time. That is, it exists either everywhere or nowhere. This is referred to as the 18 fields: 6 senses (seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching and thinking) x 3 places (in, out and everywhere like God/Buddha) that is the structure of our consciousness.
Pi (π) 3.14 means that our mind is neither here nor there or in-between (3 places) but it fills the entire universe of the ten directions (1 to 4, 1+2+3+4=10, in the decimal system). In other words, the entire universe is of the ten directions (8 directions: N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, and NW + up and down = 10 directions) and is filled with something and everything and yet it is filled with nothing until a certain action happens as a trigger.
Whether we love or hate someone, either way, there is a pain we feel when we can't see or when we see too much of the person. Our mind itself doesn't have the pain until we see that person and the person doesn't carry that emotion as well. The entire universe is filled up with all kinds of emotions so only when we see that person does a certain emotion get activated out of nothing and everything.
When our head is stirred up with many thoughts and emotions, we need to have a little pause with a cup of tea. As our head cools down, we will be able to stay as an observer who could see all the 18 fields and nothingness at the same time. Then there will be no crazed love, jealousy or hatred to bother us. There will only be a peaceful mind and unconditional happiness.
This is the art of having tea and this is the Tao(道) of living.