A Feast of Reason

And so on Friday, after a night of not enough sleep (recidivist Netflix activity), I wake up late and move through the day sluggishly. There is an interview to transcribe (one hour and fifty minutes of it, because I waffled and went off-topic over and over again) and I am way behind on steps.

So after transcribing 30 minutes of it, I get up and take a walk downstairs to bring my total up to 5,000. When I come back to the office, it's 6,052.

So I think, I'll transcribe another 30 minutes and go for another 2,500 step walk.

I listen to "The Doctor Who Sat For A Year" on Audible as I walk. Which is kinda nice as the doctor is meditating, noting his thoughts, commenting on everything all over creation...I love how discursive his thoughts are. It's like listening to an essay by Montaigne (I spent more than 49 hours last year listening to essays by Montaigne - and I also read the book).

My intention is sidetracked because W is feeling stressed and we decide that going out for dinner would be a good thing to take her mind off the intense pressure of work.

It does. We talk about Korean drama serials instead. She talks about Voice and Let's Eat. And I talk about Hotel Del Luna.

I end the day 2,000 short of my target 10,000, but spending time with a good friend is always worth it.

We drink Bundaberg gingerbeer - a feast of reason, a flow of soul.

Beautiful Sunday

I have Miss Buncle Married queued up on Audible, two of my cats in bed with me...

It's going to be a lazy Sunday. 

If I can stop one heart from breaking...

This poem was popular in the 1990s, especially during the height of the Chicken Soup for the Soul phenomenon. But after that, it seemed to disappear into obscurity once more. At least, I have not seen it quoted in decades. So I thought I would share it here:

If I can stop one heart from breaking,

I shall not live in vain;

If I can ease one life the aching,

Or cool one pain,

Or help one fainting robin

Unto his nest again,

I shall not live in vain.

More Tea

I've just gone for a walk to post a letter. The postbox was at some distance but that was a good thing because it helped me to reach my 10,000 steps today. (There was some doubt as I was far short when I got home and the new season of Grace and Frankie is out and that would usually have me glued to the TV until way past midnight.

But I only watched one episode while wolfing down my dinner, followed by 3 episodes of Big Bang Theory and then I decided to post my letter. And what do you know? It gave me exactly the number of steps I needed

But I'm not here to talk about tgat. I'm here to share yet another story from my book of tea which I have been reading every day religiously. 

One story a day.

No more. No less. 

And here it is. Tea to Last Lifetimes (by Aaron Fisher)

One of the most amazing experiences of my life happened when my whole family, including my very aged grandfather and great uncle, came to visit me in Taiwan. I took the whole group to see a tea master. The eight of them sat around the table chit-chatting about how exotic the tea room was, with its walls and walls of tea, waterfalls, and bonsai trees. Eventually, my teacher passed me a sly grin and reached behind him to a jar of very old pu-erh tea. Brewing the deep and dark liquor - - leaves ancient and wise, connected to the spirit of Nature -- changed the entire atmosphere of the room. Within minutes, it was enshrouded in a deep and peaceful silence, only the waterfall singing in the background. For the next two hours, I sat with my family in complete quiet, connected to one another as never before: never in my entire life before that day had my family and I ever sat in quiet; never had we been so close.

My mother wept with joy; my grandfather cried too, saying later that he felt the presence of my then recently departed grandmother. The power that tea can have -- the life-changing presence and connection that it may offer when prepared in the right environment -- became clearer to me than ever before. I share this experience, so personal, to show that one need not be a saint, a meditator, or even a tea lover to experience the profundity of what a tea ceremony steeped in the Tao can offer.

In this day and age, loud and cluttered, a drop or two of quiet emptiness is forceful enough to make the average person weeo. Nothing is needed more. When we study the history of tea, we find such sweeping statements as "for thousands of years tea was medicine to Chinese people," as if this somehow approximated a description of the largest part of man's relationship with this majestic plant. Authors often begin where the brush first touches paper, feeling more comfortable standing on historically verifiable ground. It takes a greater affinity with the Leaf to approach the much larger substrata of prehistory. Sure, it's true that tea was "medicine" for thousands of years before it was ever a commodity, social pleasure, or hobby. But that word, at least in English, is a bit misleading. It was "medicine" in the way that Native Americans used that word: "healing" or "with spiritual presence/power." 

In the beginning, tea was eaten and steeped by aboriginal shamans who used it to heal, to inspire meditation and to commune with divinities. Some of the earliest references to tea are as offerings to spirits as part of rituals to communicate with them. Slowly, over time, the steeped leaf became an essential brew in the life of Taoist mendicants. These hermits sought out wild bushes, claiming that tea was an ingredient in the "Morning Dew", which was the elixir of life and key to immortality. They drank tea for health, to clarify the mind, and to promote meditation as well as transmission from master to student. 

From martial arts to mathematics, the tradition of student and teacher sharing tea continues even today. If the student brews the tea and the master accepts, it is also an acceptance of the student into the lineage. More poignantly, when the master brews tea and presents it to the student there is a direct transmission of what Eastern mystics believe to be an ineffable wisdom, only available to experience. What could be more symbolic than the master brewing his mind into a bowl, which the student then consumes, taking that wisdom into himself? 

When Buddhism first came to China, it was heavily influenced by indigenous shamanism and Taoism. Anthropologists call such blending of beliefs "syncretism", suggesting that newfound systems never completely replace the old ways, but rather blend, forming new traditions. No doubt, the first Buddhists arriving from India and Tibet were served tea by the local Taoist masters, and found much concordance in their mutual appreciation for quiet, meditation, and completion through Nature. Very soon after, tea was incorporated into the lives of the burgeoning monasteries. In fact, every single tea mountain in China is also home to a famous monastery. Sometimes the monks brought the trees, for they were indeed the first farmers; but more often, they built their monasteries on mountains where wild tea bushes grew. Tea drinking, offerings, and ceremonies were recorded as part of their monastic code, and such an essential part of the Buddhist life that when Japanese monks first came to the mainland to study and carry Buddhism back to their homeland, they couldn't do so without also bringing knowledge of tea -- production, preparation, and even seeds and saplings to plant. They said, "The taste of tea is the taste of Zen, and there is no understanding of one without the other." 

Primarily, it was in the Tang dynasty that the royalty and literati were first introduced to tea during their visits to monasteries. They wished to take tea home and perhaps recapture the quietude that had transformed them on the mountain. Slowly, tea was commoditised, heralding new farming techniques, trades and eventually tea houses, private brewing for pleasure and all the other well-documented migrations of tea throughout Asia and beyond to the West. No matter what reason you've found a love for tea, it is important to remember tea's heritage, which is ultimately Nature itself; passing beyond the Buddhist to the Taoist and their steaming bowls, past the early shamans, we come at last to eons of simple trees in the forests of southern China, silent and undisturbed by man. 

To many it may seem almost like a fairy tale that those Taoist mystics cloudwalking around ancient China were able to find a sense of oneness, transcendence and connection to the universal energy when today people all over the world drink tea all the time and never get close to those sensations. My experience with my family that day proved to me that it doesn't take much for us to find a sense of tranquility and completion through tea: just provide a quiet space with a bit of respect for tea and people can change. I'd say it was strange if I hadn't seen it happen so many times. In an age of flurrying activity, some ancient stillness is needed more than ever. Rather than sweeping your tea into the hustle and bustle of your normal workday, why not try taking time to slow down and have a cup of quiet? Aren't you a part of the same world those sages dwelt in? When asked to share a tea memory, I found myself passing through the experience I had with my family to the realisation that I was connected to the same world all those who have ever practised Cha Dao were connected to. Sharing in an ancient tradition of Cha Dao, I share all my elders' tea memories as my own. As you drink your tea, are you too feeling as they felt? Do the forests not soothe your soul in the same way? Perhaps we need not ask. A sip is enough. Our breath warmed, we return to the mountain hermitage of the heart. 

Zen and the art of cleaning kitty litter

If there's one thing I hate about my morning chores, it's cleaning the kitty litter. The smell, the pure ickyness of the task, the... (I could go on for ages so let me stop here). Which is why Tuesdays and Saturdays are stellar days for me because I don't need to be cleaning no kitty litter.

Rose does it then.

But now that I've started meditating, I've stopped actively resisting the task (the resistance is what makes it all that much harder) and started to embrace it.

Yes, sweep up all the sand on the floor in a Zen way.

Yes, scoop out the poop.

If it stinks hold breath.

But in a peaceful and not a disgusted way.

Then scoop out clumps of sand held together by cat pee. (This part is stinkier).

Hold breath.

Peacefully.

I can honestly say that the last two days of cleaning kitty litter have gone a lot better.

Progress?

Maybe.

The year so far

I purchased an Audible book written by a doctor who sat for a year and listened to his busy thoughts and journalled about them. It gave me pause. I had initially intended to fill this blog with excerpts from other books but I thought, why not plot my own progress through the year? I mean, obviously, not all posts will relate to that and I will still be sharing cool stuff I read.

Note: It's the middle of the first month and I have already finished three books this year:

1. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
2. Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi
3. Miss Buncle's Book by D. E. Stevenson

The last, which was the December offering of my Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights subscription, was by far my favourite. Set in an English village in the 1930s, it's a tale about a spinster who writes a book about her village under an assumed name. Because she has no imagination, she writes what she knows. The book provokes outrage and recriminations - and becomes a bestseller. You can't get more fairytale-like than that.

Anyway, yesterday I walked into the office and ran up against someone I don't like and don't talk to, in fact, haven't spoken to since I joined this company. Usually, walking behind this person, my feelings of hostility would simmer and boil over.

But what's the use of meditating if I allow my knee jerk reactions to always take control?

So instead, I concentrated on feeling neutral.

That's it.

No hostility.

At the end of last year, I signed up with Calm, my favourite meditation app, again. I had let my subscription lapse and I did feel the lack of Calm in my life. In all senses of the word. Getting onto YouTube for a meditation video - well, I missed Tamara Levitt.

I haven't got to the place where I can wish my enemies or people I don't like loving kindness. But I'll take baby steps and maybe, just refrain from wishing them ill.

I also made a resolution to go to the little gym downstairs every day and work up a sweat. After starting out promisingly, I slipped into indolence and indifference. So I started it up again. It's one of those bandwagon things. I keep falling off...but the trick is in getting up again and to keep on keeping on. One of the books I read last year warned me against measuring results because a lack of these at the beginning tends to throw cold water over every scheme and have me wondering...why bother? It's not going to make any difference anyway.

So yeah, those are the things I've got lined up so far.

I'll check in here from time to time.

The Inconveniences of Life

This is a delightful book, a thought experiment, if you will, about an aristocrat who remained in Moscow, after the revolution, neither executed nor fleeing, and looking at the influence he exerted over his surroundings, being a gentleman, the sensibility he brought to everyday things and happenings, and looking at the changes taking place in Russia through his eyes. 

Towles has a light touch; tragedy is but gently touched upon, you get the pathos without the gore.

But one my favourite passages in this book has to do with his change in philosophy over the years...as an aristocrat he went out of his way to spare himself trouble in little things. As an adult, he saw that the things that gave him trouble were what made his life worth living.

"I'll tell you what is convenient," he said after a moment. "To sleep until noon and have someone bring you breakfast on a tray. To cancel an appointment at the very last minute. To keep a carriage waiting at the door of one party, so that on a moment's notice it can whisk you away to another. To sidestep marriage in your youth and put off having children altogether. These are the greatest of conveniences, Anushka - - and at one time, I had them all. But in the end, it has been the Inconveniences that have mattered to me the most."