Why Drink Tea?,…"The Opportunity of Tea",…beyond the Cup

 Take one step back, and the sky is bigger.  This Chinese adage can help us understand The Opportunity of Tea beyond the cup. In the west, most often, when we consider tea, we see it as a beverage.  We see it as something we consume because we like the way it tastes, the way it makes us feel when we drink it, and maybe we see it as a beverage that has health benefits for us. We usually don’t see tea as a vehicle to improve our lives at a different level further into our being beyond the cup, and beyond the physical benefits of the healthful nutrients in the tea.

The Western Paradigm of Tea: Bringing people Health, Enjoyment, and Quality of Life through Tea is our work at Zhong Guo Cha.  Yes, we very much want people to derive the valuable health benefits of enjoying quality China Teas. We also want to change the paradigm of how most people in the west consider tea, and what they expect to derive from the Tea Lifestyle. Let’s “take one step back” then and let’s see if “the sky becomes bigger”.

Shared sorrow is half sorrow, shared happiness is double happiness. Within tea, lies the opportunity for us to add a new dimension to our lives.  This new dimension is rewarding, uplifting, cleansing, and free for us to take advantage of in our lives. To do so tea drinkers must go further beyond the nutrients and the physical goodness of the quality teas they are enjoying, to an emotional place.  Move beyond the antioxidants the catechins that are working for you every day protecting your body into a realm of nurturing the soul.  Into your lifestyle, adopt not just the nutritional health benefits of tea, but adopt too, the emotional and psychological benefits that are there for you and those important to you. Tea is a beverage to enjoy and reap the benefits of every day.  Enjoying tea and everything it has to offer is something to do as an individual, and with those that are important to us in our lives.  Sharing tea, and enjoying tea with significant people in our lives creates opportunity. The act of coming together over tea in a social setting allows us to enjoy the tea, and the people with whom we are sharing the tea.  It creates an opportunity to reflect on what is important about our lives and our relationships.  It creates the environment  in which

to appreciate people, tea, and the finer things in life.  It allows us to offer esteemed hospitality and respect to each other.

The way to Enlightenment: Sharing tea, conversation, appreciation, mutual admiration, mutual respect, and love helps us understand “shared sorrow” being “half sorrow”, and “shared happiness” being “double happiness”.  As we enjoy the tea and the conversation, something unexpected occurs.  From personal experience on occasion after occasion, I know that you will begin to notice a realization of the cleansing that is happening of your mind, your body, and your soul.  A realization occurs, as welcome as seeing an old friend again, that you are experiencing a high quality moment in your life and the lives of those around you.  

In Asia, the wonder of enlightenment through tea has occurred for centuries. Each day families, friends, and associates take time to share tea. Enjoying the Tea Experience and the Tea Lifestyle are a culturally embedded social behavior there. This act of sharing tea has become the way of life, and the way it is.    In 1906 Okakuro Kakuzo explained it this way: “Tea with us became more than an idealization of the form of drinking: It was a religion of the art of life.  The beverage grew to be an excuse for the for the worship of purity and refinement, a sacred function,…The tearoom was an oasis where weary travelers could meet to drink from the common spring of art appreciation”.

From drinking tea to “tasting” tea:   As our appreciation in the west for fine loose Select China Teas grows, as our understanding of Select China Teas increases,  and as our desire and readiness to enjoy the nuances of Select China Teas becomes more important us, we will begin to move from drinking tea, finally to tasting tea. Reaching an aware and enlightened state through incorporation of the Tea Lifestyle into your life will be further rewarded and enhanced with a profound appreciation for the wide variety in selections of Select China Teas, and the processing craftsmanship of the Tea Masters who make them what they are.

Getting there:  The important part is to allow the tea to cleanse your mind, body, & soul.  To do this one needs to create the environment for the opportunity of enlightenment.  Most important to the Tea Ceremony, and to the act of sharing the “Tea Experience” is the Tea, the people and the sharing.  At Zhong Guo Cha, we recommend use of one of the ZGC Infusers for those not yet familiar with use of the loose leaves, and the Gai Wan, Teapots, or other Tea Ware. The one most important fact in infusing your tea is to not let the leaves remain in the water once the desired color has been achieved.  The leaves will continue to deplete of vital neutriants, and the liquor will become too strong and bitter.  The ZGC infusion guide, or the ZGC “Tea Drinkers Quick Start Guide to using Loose Leaves”  will give you all the information you need to properly infuse the tea.  At ZGC we urge you to make the effort to bring significant people in your life (both personal and professional) together regularly over tea.  Often it is the most rewarding to share tea with mixed groupings of family, friends, associates and colleagues. Please contact us so we can help by answering any questions you may have.

A vehicle for our lives:  Tea, like a vehicle can deliver us to the underlying message of maintaining perspective in our lives, not only for an hour, or for a day, but on a continuing basis as a norm. Incorporating the Tea  Lifestyle into our lives takes us to a realm of enlightenment, beyond the nutritional health benefits of the tea, and to “The Opportunity of Tea,…beyond the Cup”.  Take “one step back”, and you will find the “sky” is truly “bigger”.