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| The main gate to Huqiu Temple, Suzhou. | Tea is native Chinese plant while Buddhism is an imported religion. 0riginally they belonged to different groups but gradually became closely related, even inseparable from each other. People say tea-Zen affinity not without reason. Lu Yu said in his The Book of Tea, "tea is cold, most suitable for people in pursuit of morality and virtue." Tea tastes better in aftertaste I first bitter but sweet on careful savoring, This is secretly in accordance with the Buddhist aspiration for happiness after misery.
Zen Buddhism maintains that everyone has Buddhist nature, so is capable of becoming Buddha. Nevertheless, according to different levels of practice, Zen Buddhism has two sects-the Sudden and the Gradual. People advocating gradual awakening believe human heart is originally pure but is polluted by prejudices and ambitions. What gymnosophists should do is to constantly remove their impurities, as they constantly dust a mirror. On the contrary, people advocating sudden awakening omit this drudgery of frequent cleaning, and insist that as long as one has a pure heart, One can become Buddha on the instant. In short, gradual awakening views the process of becoming Buddha as a change from impurity to purity. while sudden awakening basically denies the reality of pollution.
First, tea keeps people awake while sitting Zen at night. Second, it helps people digest while full. Last, it gives people a serene heart without desires. The earliest written record of sitting Zen started in East Jin, when a monk called Dan Daokai, in order to keep sleep away, took medicine every day and sometimes drank a special kind of tea called Tea Soda-a cooked combination of tea, ginger, laurel r orange f date f and other spices. Gradual's notion of changing from impurity to purity
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| Laughing Buddha at Lingyin Temple, Hangzhou. | largely influenced the development of Chinese tea culture. It was in Tang Dynasty when Zen flourished that people wholly deserted the practice of adding condiments in ka.Lu Yu, who grew up in a temple, regarded the sticky and tasteless Tea Soda as "rubbish food." He wrote in a book, ¡°put shallot, ginger, date, orange skin, dogwood, mint, ere. in a pot and cook them together...This is swill from drain. "People started to pay attention to the natural pure and strong taste of tea, just like Zen advised people to seek and discover their own true and pure hearts.
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Meditation Tearoom. | Zen not only affected the lower class, but was welcomed by rulers as well. Master Huineng was
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| A kind of new tea tea called Taipinghoukui. | highly regarded by the female emperor Wu Zetian(624-705) and participated in making major policies. AD 849, an emperor of Tang Dynasty asked a 120'year-old monk for advices on longevity. The monk replied his longevity didn't depend on medicine but on tea. He drank 40 or 50 cups of tea every day, sometimes more than l00 cups. Although Suppressing Buddhism once, Tang emperors were supportive and encouraging for Buddhism on the whole. Emperor Xizong (873-888) secretly hid golden and silver tea wares in the cellar of Famen Temple in Shaanxi Province, performing the highest royal rite. The fact that tea wares were carefully put together with the supreme treasure of Buddhism; Buddhist relic in a special room was another convincing proof of the affinity between tea and Zen.
In northern Song Dynasty, monks in Wat
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Meditation Tearoom. | er£¦Moon Temple of Dongting Mount in Jiangsu Province (in east China)were very good at cooking tea. They made a kind of tea named after their temple-Water£¦Moon Tea, which became today's Pilochun. The celebrated poet Liu Yuxi(772-842)of Tang Dynasty mentioned in his poem that monks then invented a cultivating method of creating shade in the garden. They planted tea together with bamboo which could provide shade for tea trees and the tree absorbed the ties' fragrance of bamboo. A monk(picked leaves from these trees to treat guests. Fried in a pan, leaves filled the room with sweet smell. This was the earliest record of "frying green" method of cooking tea.
Around every New Year, monks assembled to taste leaves planted by themselves. This was the famous ceremony of "Popularizing tea." Jingshan Temple in Mount Tianmu of Zhejiang Province-known as the best Zen temple to the South of Yangtze River-held a tea party every spring in which the chief master cooked tea in person and tea monks served tea to monks and guests present£®Taking tea, monks and guests smelt its savor, observed its color, tasted its flavor, and graded its quality. This kind of tea party lasted over l00 years from Song Dynasty to Yuan Dynasty.
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| The tea of Taipinghoukui is from the remote mountains of Anhui Province. |
Famous Zen masters Were usually experts on tea. Lu Yu's good friend Jiaoran-a poet and a monk-was the first one to put forward the phrase "tea ceremony." Some even took him as the inaugurator of tea ceremony. Among his many poems about tea.
The importance of tea to Buddhism Was not just in the Sect of Zen.Sect of Mi in Tang Dynasty also considered Lea as the best offerings for Buddha. What was more, in its circulation, Chinese tea culture went abroad to Japan. In AD 803, a Japanese monk Saichou Came to China to study Buddhist knowledge. When he returned to Japan two years later after finishing studying, he took tea seeds of Mount Tiantai(in Zhejiang Province in east China)with him, bringing Japanese history without Lea to an end; Saichou sowed the seeds in Hiyoshijinja of Hieizani in Kyoto. Even today Hiyoshijinja had an epitaph like this: "This is the earliest Lea garden of Japan." In Southern Song Dynasty, a Japanese monk Eisai also came to China in pursuit of Buddhism. After going back, he wrote the first book on tea in Japan-Keeping Health with Tea. Eisai thought that medicine only cured one disease while tea cured all diseases.
He also recorded the ways of making and drinking tea in Southern Song Dynasty, and Was esteemed as H found of tea in Japan About the Lime of Ming Dynasty, based on the literature left by these Tang-visiting monks, Qian Lixiu founded Japanese tea ceremony featured in "harmony, respect, serenity, and quietness, Though not amonk, Qian Lixiu fully comprehended the essential affinity between Zen and tea. He said," the essence of tea is no other than boiling Water and cooking tea, This concept of "Zen in lire" is in perfect agreement with what Zhaozhou monk and Master Huineng once said. |
