Sunday Sessions — Pu-Erh Tea — Dissolving Walls

the session, before

— Victoria

Pu-Erh tea is often encountered slowly — not as flavor, but as atmosphere. This session unfolded in that register.

My guest and I sat facing opposite directions. We interacted when appropriate, but more often sat quietly — eyes closed, or half-resting on whatever happened to be in view. Spacing out. Communing with the invisible.

In my case, that view was a well-weathered brick wall, its surface softened by time — calcium deposits washed and re-washed by rain. At one point I remarked that if the wall began to melt, this would be confirmation that we had arrived at a good place in the session.

My guest faced the harbour — or what would have been the harbour, were it not for the backsides of the Union Club and the Hotel Empress, two stalwarts of the Victoria skyline. Though unseen, the harbour was felt, and seemed to play a role in what followed.

After a long silence, my guest said that just as the second tea was first poured, a blue patch opened in the rainy sky. A shaft of light passed through it and fell directly in his line of sight. I suggested this was an entirely appropriate response from the natural world, as we were drinking a tea of extreme rarity and grace.

This was a tea difficult to perceive in groups — amid traffic, chatter, or distraction. Neither of us could be accused of being overly talkative that day, and so the tea seemed to rise to meet us.

We can prepare the room. Ultimately, it is the tea that decides how it will enter — if it enters at all.

The anthropomorphizing of tea is sometimes dismissed as fantasy or delusion, and it is usually best left out of discussion. It cannot be explained in a way that satisfies. I mention it only as reassurance for those who encounter this experience and wonder if they are imagining things.

They are — no more so than the world itself is the product of imagination. It both is and is not.

What I will say is this: if you reach a point in a tea session where you briefly wonder whether you are influencing the weather with your mind — and then question your own sanity — this is, in fact, a very good sign. You may at last have found the tea you were searching for.

The sun set that day, but the feeling lingered — a subtle pulse in the body. We do not participate in such sessions to learn so much as to remember. We tune the body and mind until the feeling carries us for weeks, until the next meeting with a tea capable of folding memory, thought, and experience into a single moment — both in time, and seemingly outside it.

A tea will show itself differently depending on time, place, weather, and the people present. This once struck me as strange. The strangeness has not worn off, though it has become something I now quietly expect — or at least allow for.

Tea from this session:

dirt 1983

$100.00

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Sunday Sessions — Pu-Erh Tea — Playing with Time

Cup of Pu-Erh Tea in Hand

Pu-Erh tea is suited to slow, meditative tea sessions, as its depth and character reveal themselves gradually over time.

Some thresholds open easily, others stay shut no matter how we knock. And sometimes the most intriguing ones are those that appear open, yet do not move when pushed. I’ve learned not to fight these doors. Often they are keepers of timing — reminders that not everything is meant to be entered in the same way, or at the same moment.

The Garden Path Unfolds

Recently I found this to be true not in a garden, but in web design. A small element I intended as a passageway refused to behave as planned. On one screen it opened as intended, on another it remained static. At first I thought of it as failure, a problem to be fixed. But after sitting with it awhile, I saw it differently: the so-called broken way was actually better — a kind of digital kintsugi. What I had planned as a feature became something richer: a threshold that revealed itself only in certain conditions, asking patience of the one who approached.

Tea is much the same. Some leaves reveal themselves instantly; finer teas often wait. The more mature the leaf, the more it seems to hold its own counsel. It will not yield to impatience, yet in the right hands, at the right time, the cup suddenly overflows with fragrance and depth.It may be the same with technology. What doesn’t work at first glance may simply be inviting us to slow down, to enter differently, or not at all — to look upon our world anew, as we might after a visit to the garden. Some thresholds are open for everyone. Others keep their mystery, offering passage only when the time, or the seeker, is ready.

Tea, Zen, and Other Inside Jokes — Pu-Erh Tea

Tea, Tao, and other things…

The Phoenix rising not from from flame, but from the oceanic sky. To see life bursting forth from fire, from ash, rocks, trees, clouds, all things. To see the world smiling back from you, and at last be in on the joke — for ever and for the first time. This was, in essence the viewpoint of the Taoist. though Taoism was arguably at its peak about a thousand years ago, it never really goes away. Culturally it may appear to ebb and flow, but this just means that cultures — at times — take themselves too seriously. Many Taoists traditionally chose to leave life in the cities and wander the mountains, pursuing the way of the wind. This passage, this process, can just as easily be wandered within. Without bothering to ramble on as to whether there is any separation between the two, wander we must — be it in darkness or illumination. Tao need not be referred to by any particular name, the only point of affiliation is that you be switched on. Achieved in all manner of ways, it is Nature, or more importantly the act of naturalness which best inspires our purpose. Neither seeking to control nor be controlled. Traditionally, Zen has been pursued through various disciplines such as archery and flower arranging, poetry and painting, with the goal being to achieve the essence of the poetic, or the dance, within our selves. Tea is often fuel poured upon the flames of this process of achieving the great ultimate — using the term from Taichi (the definition of Taichi). In the post Alan Watts age the Western reductionist, fully automatic model of the Universe stands on increasingly crumbling ground — even to square types. We are increasingly inviting ourselves to embrace the infinite and discover the inter connectedness of all things, regardless of what histories tell us.

The path of the Taoist is, at once, solitary and united with all things. It is a path which listens to the heart-song which guides us to our distinct outcomes. Be it by leaves of grass or leaves of tea, Nature beckons us to her embrace. For many, over countless centuries, Tea has offered passage to a wider world of experience. A world which is both large and small, self-contradicting and yet not, like all things Tea and Tao, an enigma.

Cloudwalker ~

Pu-Erh tea is uniquely suited to mindful drinking — evolving slowly across many infusion, revealing depth through patience rather than intensity. The teas shared in Cloudwalker sessions are chosen with this spirit in mind.

Elysium — Wild Tea

$168.00

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