Food for the Mind

Tea and Zen, one taste.

This phrase, more than any other, expresses what tea and tea culture were reaching for from the medieval into the early modern period.

Between the quiet mind free of stray thought that Zen practice aims at, and the clear, settled state that comes from concentrating on the taste of tea, there was a sensation held in common.

Tea helps the “heart,” and a sound working of the heart sharpens the spirit. Tea can fairly be called food for the mind.

As an aside: the other drink that famously acts on the human mind is alcohol. Both tea and alcohol have been important elements of food culture since the deep past, and the reason in both cases is a powerful capacity to alter consciousness. Broadly speaking, alcohol brings a state of intoxication in which consciousness clouds; tea brings a state of alertness in which consciousness clears.

So it can be said that to care about tea is to face yourself thoroughly. And in fact our predecessors used tea as a tool for exactly that — for facing themselves and their own interiors without evasion.

In many Zen temples and places of practice you find the gesture of drinking tea before and after sitting. Tea has been used as an aid to settling concentration.

The meditation method handed down at Mount Tiantong, a Zen temple, cannot do without tea. You meet the flavour the tea presents with your whole being, waking consciousness, and the meditation deepens.

Tea and meditation are inseparable — one might even say necessary to each other. To taste tea is a kind of meditation, and a practice of enquiring after the Way that lies hidden in ordinary life.

Precisely because our own age is so restless, it is worth holding on to the spirit of pinming lundao — tasting tea and discussing the Way.