Tea meditation

Tea meditation is an opportunity to enjoy ourselves. To enjoy the company of our brothers and sisters. And yet you only need some tea. Why people spend two hours just because of one cup of tea? Judging from the viewpoint of the businessmen in our time, that is waste of time. Two hours just for a cup of tea! You can do it in one minute. So it’s a waste of time, and time is money. But according to our practice, time is not money. Time is life. And money is much less than life. And in the two hours drinking tea together, we don’t get money, but we get life.

That is essential. To sit in such a way that you feel that you are solid, that you are free. You are free from the past, free from the future, free from the running, the chasing after sensual pleasures, free from regret, free from fear. That is a lot, just to allow yourself to sit.

And you drink tea like, also like in the coffee shop, but your way of drinking tea is different. Because when you hold a cup of tea with mindfulness, with your two hands, you are doing it with all your being. Your body is entirely here. Your mind is entirely here. And you produce your true presence to 100%. You sit here and you just sit here. You don’t sit anywhere else. Sometimes we sit here, but we don’t sit here. We sit in the past. We sit in the future. We sit somewhere else. We are not really present. And if you are fully present, and then the tea will be fully present also.

If you are absorbed into the past or the future, tea is not really there. Although you are holding it, it is not there. So the condition, the basic condition for the tea to be there is that you you are there. You are there, and then the tea is here. And drinking tea in mindfulness, that is a miracle. You drink tea and you know that you are drinking tea. Life is present. And the Buddha is present. A peace, a stability is present.

In a tea meditation, there are people who can do it 100% or 90% or 80%. But there are those of us who can do it only for 5%, 10%. We are not solid enough. We are not really in a tea meditation. More than half of us is outside of the tea meditation. And how can you practice better? It’s not by forcing yourself to be there, but to be able to taste the joy of the practice. When you are able to taste the joy of the practice and then it’s very easy to be there to 100% and participate into the practice to 100%.