90 per cent of meditation is making space for meditation. Serving tea with different guests now has allowed me a little dip of the toe in each other's thoughts – it is quite easy for us, once the connections are wired up through the tea ceremony, for us to drop into the same heart space and start to share a telepathic space that needs no words to feel an affinity with each other – and the next lesson in Cha Dao for me i to be able to accept all thoughts and feelings and feel neutral about them. This includes almost innocuous comments such as, I don't quite like the taste of this tea (to be fair I have not heard of this just yet now, but I certainly applaud my tea sisters back in Hong Kong for facing these situations so gracefully!), or "I don't have time to meditate", or "Let's skip today's tea: what's the big deal?". And it gets me every time back before Cha Dao, how I cannot get them to do it or see how good this could be for them if they could just see how a daily meditation practice is vital and life-changing. Walking The Way of Tea I feel myself easing the role of a Zen student, in which I live by no doctrine and practise instead to have transmissions that are wordless and formless – and of course, to have some fun along the Way. 🍃
