Archives for the month of: March, 2011

Bruce Lee, Jeet Kune Do, and Gungfu Cha

March 23, 2011 //
1

~Intro~

I’m a huge fan of martial arts movies, and as such I’ve been a long time fan of the late Bruce Lee. When I was young I was interested in Bruce Lee because he was such a major badass, someone who can’t be messed with. In my mind’s eye he became this unbeatable force of nature, and a hero to me. As I grew older, and learned more about Bruce Lee, I became less focused on his physical capabilities, and more focused on his ideas / philosophies, which resonated very deeply with me.

Lately I’ve been thinking about Bruce Lee’s idea of Jeet Kune Do, and applying what I think are its core principles to the art of making tea in the Gong Fu (Kung Fu) style…

~What is JKD~


Jeet Kune Do can be translated as “the way of whatever works.” I’ve also seen it translated as “the way of whatever works best,” and “the way of water.“

Bruce Lee described JKD as a reaction of the overly rigid styles of martial arts. The wikipedia article on the topic explains this well…

Through his studies Bruce came to believe that styles had become too rigid, and unrealistic. He called martial art competitions of the day “Dry land swimming”. He believed that combat was spontaneous, and that a martial artist cannot predict it, only react to it, and that a good martial artist should “Be like water” and move fluidly without hesitation.

Bruce Lee would often use water as an analogy for JKD, saying that a person (a martial artist) should be “like water.” What Lee meant by this was that a person should be as adaptable as possible, so that whatever situation they were in they would be able to respond appropriately.

~What is GongFu Cha~

Gongfu Cha can be translated as “preparing tea with great skill.” Meaning preparing tea in a way which brings out the best flavor. More often than not Gongfu Cha is characterized by the use of a Gaiwan, or Yixing teapot, using LOTS of tea leaves, and many short infusions. When it’s done well the flavor of the tea brewed Gongfu style will change over the course of the many infusions, and the person(s) drinking the tea will fully experience all the tea has to offer.

The only problem I see with Gongfu Cha is that people can get too hung up on the style aspect of it. When this happens one loses sight of what Gongfu Cha is really about, which is of course experience of drinking tea. Another way to make this point would be to make a comparison. Imagine a archer who becomes so involved with the ceremony of shooting an arrow that he / she does not see the target.

Gongfu Cha is a ceremony, and doing the ceremony well is important. However, it’s always important to remember that the ceremony is a tool used to make good tea. Thus if making good tea means changing up the ceremony in some way than people should not feel any compunction about making adjustments, because Gongfu Cha is really just like Jeet Kune Do.

~The Spirit JKD & GFC~

I believe that if you take away the fact that Jeet Kune Do is a martial arts thing, and the fact that Gongfu Cha is a tea thing, and just look at the spirit of them both it becomes clear how similar they are.

Both things encourage a person to have confidence in themselves, and their ability. As a person trains, or is trained, in JKD or GFC they get to the point where they can start to trust their instincts, and make the necessary adjustments on the fly.

And most importantly both can teach us how to be like water, and respond perfectly to our present.

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Categories Uncategorized

On Drinking Tea Alone

March 10, 2011 //
2

~Intro~

I love preparing tea for other people, I truly do.  The art of sharing tea is something that I believe should be practiced more, because if it were people would more connected.  However, I feel that if a person does not learn how to make tea for themselves, the tea they make for others will not be as good as it could be.

~Our Own Worst Critic~

There is a cliché that we are our own worst critic when it comes to evaluating our creative endeavors, and speaking for myself I can say that this is very true.

Throughout my life I’ve had a hard time looking at something I create, no matter what it is, and thinking that it is “good”.  The flaws burn so bright in my mind’s eye that they blind me to the things that I have done well, and I’ve given up many different creative pursuits due to the pain and frustration seeing these flaws caused me.

Feeling that I was never able to make something which could live up to my own expectations of quality,  would dissuade me from investing the currency of my time into new creative endeavors.  However, learning to make tea for myself, is what helped to heal me from the damaged that years of looking at the glaring flaws of my creativity had caused.

~The Lessons of Tea~


When I first attempted to brew tea I was obsessed with doing it “the right way,” I would hyper focused on directions, and over think all of my actions.  As you can imagine the results were not good.  However, for some reason I choose to keep trying to brew tea.

Over time I stopped thinking, and just let what felt right take over.   The tea instructed me in “letting go” which is a lesson I’ve always had trouble learning, but I found the more I was able to accept this lesson and let go, the more my tea improved.

I still made lots of mistakes, but not very many that resulted in truly awful tea.  As time went on my mistakes became less frequent, and often times my mistakes would turn into valuable discoveries about tea.  Then one day it dawned on me, I had learned how to really make tea!  I had also learned a more valuable lesson, namely how to have more trust in myself and my actions.

~The Perfect is Not Real~

Another lesson I think I learned was that the “prefect cup of tea” is not real.  It only exists in the mind, and it exists different in each individual mind.

Even if it were possible to create the perfect cup of tea what would I, or anyone else for that matter, do with it?  The way I see it there are really only two choices…

One could drink it, which would result in it’s no longer existing except perhaps as a fleeting memory.

Or let is sit, and cool slowly sucomb to entropy.

The point here being: Even if a perfect cup of tea did exit outside of the mind, regardless of whether or not we drank it, the cup of tea it could not stay perfect.  It would be absolutely temporary, and time would take from it in the same way that it takes from all temporary beings such as you and I…

You, me, and the tea, are all so similar.  We exist for such a short time, and during that time we are perfectly imperfect.

It’s in this contradiction of perfect imperfection that the beauty of tea, and (I believe) the beauty of our own short simple lives, is revealed.

~ In the End~

I’ve found that after learning this lesson, the flaws of my own creations no longer cause nearly as much pain or frustration, and I hope that someplace someone else is having this same sort of epiphany.

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Categories Learning & Education

The Path

March 2, 2011 //
5

~A Story of Frustration~

One day, not all that long ago, a respected person in the tea industry (who is being left nameless on on purpose) had said some negative things to me about my style of brewing tea.  I’m not sure if it was this person’s intention to helpfully / constructively criticize me, or if this person was actually trying to put me down, but I do know that the pointed words which were  spoken had a negative effect on my state of mind.   I also know that these words stuck with me, and jumped into the conscience mind whenever I attempted to brew tea for the next few days.

The overall effect was that all the tea I brewed was, at least in my mind, filled with flaws.  I brewed some tea for Mei during this period as well, and even she noticed that “something was off” with both my brewing style as well as the liquor that my brewing style was producing.  Needless to say this was extremely frustrating.  My feelings of frustration lead me to do some looking around on the internet for better ways of brewing tea.  It was during this searching that I happened upon a digital copy of issue eight of a tea magazine called The Leaf.

 

~A Quote~

At the end of the magazine there is a section for questions and answer, and it was in that section that I read the following…

“The path from the mind to the hand flows through the heart.”  In fact, that is the meaning of Gong Fu tea: that the mastery is in the heart and hand, not the mind. You can’t think your way to better tea.

The lesson for me here is two fold…

First: The disparaging comments that were sent my way were really got to me, they hurt my feelings, and the hurt made its way into the tea I brewed.

Being a male in western culture and admitting that such a mundane thing, “hurt my feelings” is something which is not the easiest thing for me to do.  Perhaps that’s foolish… I don’t know, but the fact remains that my feelings were hurt, and I was choosing not to recognize that.

I never did confront the person who made the negative remarks, but I don’t think I need to because when I was able to acknowledge my feelings of hurt the tea I was making seemed to improve.

Second: In addition to making me feel hurt the negative remarks also made me choose to over think things when I was making tea, and as the quote above says, “You can’t think your way to better tea.”

 

~ In the End~

It is important to realize that what we are human, and as such we are a mixture of thoughts, emotions, past experiences, and so much more.

When a person sits down at the tea tray they bring themselves, and their baggage, which has more of an impact on the tea than any other equipment or water temp.

It is equally important to realize how much brewing tea can teach an individual about his or her own mental and emotional state.  In short tea can be a tool of self exploration, and self discovery.

When these two lessons are combined the sum is: We bring ourselves to the tea tray unaware of ourselves, but if we listen to our heart as we go through actions of preparing tea we gain the potential to become more aware of who we are, and what has made us the way we are.  Ounce this knowledge is gained each of us has an opportunity to change the person who leaves the tea tray and steps back into the world.

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Categories Learning & Education, Tea Community
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