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Tea and Meditation

The document discusses how tea and the tea ceremony can be transformed into a meditative spiritual experience. It describes how in Zen monasteries, drinking tea is done in a formal ceremony where participants sit in silence while the tea is prepared. Pouring and receiving the tea is done with great mindfulness and awareness, turning the ordinary act into a meditation. Any daily activity can become meditative if done with presence of mind, love and awareness. The tea ceremony is presented as a symbolic way to bring meditation into everyday life.

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Bhakta Kishor
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165 views2 pages

Tea and Meditation

The document discusses how tea and the tea ceremony can be transformed into a meditative spiritual experience. It describes how in Zen monasteries, drinking tea is done in a formal ceremony where participants sit in silence while the tea is prepared. Pouring and receiving the tea is done with great mindfulness and awareness, turning the ordinary act into a meditation. Any daily activity can become meditative if done with presence of mind, love and awareness. The tea ceremony is presented as a symbolic way to bring meditation into everyday life.

Uploaded by

Bhakta Kishor
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Tea and Meditation

Tea: A Spiritual Experience Tea Awareness


All the Buddhist masters have been drinking tea, it has A cup of tea in Zen is not the same as it is anywhere else in
been their discovery. It was Bodhidharma who discovered tea. the world. A cup of tea is the greatest reception a Zen master
The name `tea' comes from the mountain Tha in China, where can give to you. The cup of tea represents awareness. After
Bodhidharma was meditating. And the name has remained drinking tea you cannot go to sleep; hence tea became one of
the same in different languages ... just slight changes. In the most important symbols of awareness, of meditation.
Hindi it is chai, in Marathi it is cha, in Chinese it is tha, in "Have a cup of tea" does not simply mean, "Have a cup of tea."
English it has become tea. But a thousand masters have never Certainly the tea is offered, but with the understanding that
denied tea as something unspiritual. the cup is full of awareness. A cup of tea has been used in
On the contrary, Zen has in its monasteries a special teahouse, many ways by the Zen masters.
and when they go for tea it is called a tea ceremony. They -Osho, Joshu: The Lion's Roar, # 6
have transformed the simple act of drinking tea into a
beautiful meditation. You have to leave your shoes outside as From Mundane to Meditative
if you are entering into a temple. And there is a master who is To make tea a meditative ceremony is just symbolic. It
going to lead the ceremony. Then everybody sits down in the shows that any mundane activity can become meditative.
silence of the monastery, the tea is prepared on the samovar Digging a hole in the garden, planting new roses in the
and everybody listens to the music of the samovar boiling the garden... you can do it with such tremendous love and
tea. It becomes a meditation. Watchfulness is meditation, compassion, you can do it with the hands of the buddha.
what you watch does not matter. There is no contradiction.
Then the master with great grace brings the tea to everybody; The tea ceremony is only the beginning. I say unto you: Your
pours the tea with immense awareness, consciousness, every act should be a ceremony. If you can bring your
carefulness, respectfulness, and everybody receives the tea as consciousness, your awareness, your intelligence to the act, if
if something divine is being received. In that silence sipping you can be spontaneous, then there is no need for any other
the tea ... and this very ordinary thing has become a spiritual religion, life itself will be the religion.
experience. Nobody can speak in the teahouse, silence is the
rule. When you put down your cups and saucers you also -Osho, Hyakujo: The Everest Of Zen, With Basho's Haikus, # 5
bow down with gratitude to existence. The tea was only a OW
symbol.
- Osho, Dogen: The Zen Master: A Search & A Fulfilment # 4
T he whole art of meditation is to

bring eternal peace, silence, joy to

you. And the miracle is: it wells

up within you. Meditation simply

removes all the barriers in the

path. It removes all the rocks;

and the streams start flowing.

And once you have known that it

is nothing to do with anything on

the outside, you have a great

independence, great freedom, you

don't depend on anybody, you can

be absolutely joyous in your

aloneness. Your aloneness

becomes luminous; it is no longer

lonely, it is full of joy, it is a

dancing aloneness, it is a singing

aloneness, it has great beauty and

great poetry and great music.

-Osho.

OW

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