Tea: In its Deepest Enchantment
A way of life
Tea is the second most consumed beverage in the world, after water.I came across the way of tea early last year, soon after I was hit with an unexpected health diagnosis. Thoroughly seized by many questions including this one, “Why would someone devote hours just to make a simple cup of tea?”
(Fast forward to today, my mornings are spent practicing Bonryaku Temae, a simple tray-style matcha tea preparation for beginners. In the afternoons, I brew the same type of Taiwanese oolong tea to understand its depth over time).
My quest took me on a journey in ways I never expected, from Japanese Chado to Chinese and Taiwanese teas, to truly understand the six main types of teas: White 白茶, yellow 黄茶, green 绿茶, oolong 青茶, black 红茶, dark 黑茶 (post-fermented teas like Pu’er, Liu Bao, Fu Zhuan, Ancha).
It converted me from a user of tea bags - shaped by the commercialization of tea through Western colonial trade - into someone who embraces loose tea leaves and matcha powder.
My curiosity continuing to flow beyond teas. Most importantly, through tea - as energy from nature, I would like to understand myself.
And I feel extremely lucky to have crossed paths with teachers - both in person and virtually - who have been practicing tea spiritually for 10 to over 35 years, learning alongside in their quiet wisdom, shaping my own path.
“Tea is a way of life”.
“Through tea, make time to have the conversation with your heart”.
“Tea has its own time so waiting is important. Learn how tea makes you feel in your body, your mind, your soul”.
“We must know how to wait. Familiarity with a subject can hinder learning so it’s important to keep the beginner’s mind, the curiosity and humility, and not be too quick to jump into judgment”.
David Brooks’ OpEd on NYT
A person at leisure is the opposite of a person who wants to be an influencer. She is driven by internal propulsion, not for outward display. When that is your mentality, it alters your attitude toward the suffering involved in the process of growth. The drudgery of the work feels like the unfurling of your very nature — a chef endlessly cutting vegetables, a bricklayer endlessly laying brick.
One falls into a rhythm that is characteristically one’s own.The latest OpEd by columnist David Brooks deeply resonated with me. It gives me a glimpse into the soul and the spirit of people enchanted by a quest beyond themselves - be it a calling or a way of life.
Here are some of my favorite quotes from his article - A Surprising Route to the Best Life Possible, 27 March 2025.
The moment of enchantment can be so subtle and soft.
It is a great and under appreciated talent — the capacity to be seized.
Most of our great journeys begin with a surprise. Wonder, Descartes observed, “is a sudden surprise of the soul.”
What are the kinds of experiences that can kindle a life-altering enchantment? Some people stumble across a group of people who just seem cool, who just seem to be doing something worthwhile. They think: I want to be like them.
Other people find their vocation through some contact with beauty.
There is a moment of ignition, something outside touching something deep inside, the opening up of new personal possibilities.
“Where is your Self to be found?” the Austrian poet Hugo Von Hofmannsthal asked. “Always in the deepest enchantment you have experienced.”
I guess the process starts in mystery. Like falling in love, these ignition moments happen at the deepest layer of our unconsciousness — that dark region where interests ignite, desires form, the motivational core of our being. This is the part of myself I can’t see easily into. Why am I interested in astronomy but not geology? I don’t know. Why am I entranced by Rembrandt and left cold by El Greco? I don’t know. Why do I love her but not her? I don’t know. We can decide what we’ll order off life’s menu, but we can’t decide what we like.
As in any kind of falling in love, it happens in the wildness of the heart. As in any kind of falling in love, it can start with a subtle prenotion, but it soon arouses amazing energies. As in any form of falling in love, it can lead to sublime irrationality. When you’ve fallen in love with a person, town or activity, it’s not because you calculated your way there; it’s because some flame was ignited by a force greater, darker and more passionate than your reasoning mind; it irradiates you, conquers you and demands obedience.
Effort becomes its own reward. Mountain climbers often don’t pick the easiest route to the mountain top; they pick the hardest route they can manage, because they value challenge, growth and the fruits of hard effort itself.
There’s a blessing in that human instability… And the most important thing is — it must be something you cannot possibly do!
WuDe: Zen, the Art, Importance of Living Tea
Sutras are written in nature, in the leaves of a plant, non-conceptual, and non-verbal.
Lately, I also took inspiration from a 2+ hour podcast by
featuring WuDe, Founder of Global Tea Hut and a Zen Monk. Some of my favorite quotes below:天人合一 Tea harmonizes
Tea is a conversation between nature and human. Tea helps us feel our connection with nature. When we drink tea, we are also drinking the weather, the seasons, the energy from the sunshine, moon, and photosynthesis.
Tacitness returns with each sip of tea. Unspoken but deeply felt in how our body reacts, through our senses and our presence.
茶禅一味 Tea as a path from outside to inside. Tea makes our heart space. It opens up our consciousness to nature.
Tea is a time where you sat down the world. And Asian civilizations understood this very clearly.
Tea is a space of social equality, as first mentioned in Lu Yu’s the Classic of Tea to the Japanese tea ceremony where different class of people can hang out together.
[52.21 minutes into the podcast] The story of Sen no Rikyu and the fisherman reflects the simple and profound beauty at the heart of the Way of Tea. Rikyu took his senior students to have tea at a humble fisherman’s house. Rikyu thought that the tea preparation was transcendent even though it wasn’t served with expensive tea ware nor with grand gestures but nervousness. “That man didn’t invite us to his home to show off his tea brewing skills, it is an invitation to his heart. It is tea prepared with love.”
Traditions in the world are oracle-d by people. Culturally, linguistically, temporally specific with translations and concepts where you can agree or disagree. Sutras are written in nature, in the leaves of a plant, non-conceptual, non-verbal, and you can’t argue with that.
Ceremony, sitting, silence, connection. In a ceremony - there’s the form, freedom in the form, and love behind the form.
Beginner’s mind and reaching for depth
On the stage, there’s no music and there’s no me. There’s only dance. And there’s no time.
A beginner is free. To stay with the beginner’s mind, a true advanced practitioner remains free within the form, unconstricted by training. And a whole world of variation can be done in an infinite amount of ways.
[1 hour 18 minutes into the podcast] Many modern people are tourists in everything in their life, not masters of anything. They won’t even take the 10 years to refine their skills. It is important to respect the journey and hard work needed to get to a place of value.
What you invest in a relationship is what you get back. In tea as with life, if your relationship with tea is superficial (e.g. quick tea from a teabag) without heart and soul, your relationship with it will never be deep and profound.
Zen as a direct, non verbal transmission from teacher to student. Though words can point the way too.
Stillness is in the noise. Our sense of peace has to be internal, otherwise we will get easily disrupted by any external noise.
Depths deepens and transforms those who enter it.
How you do anything is how you do everything. - Zen proverb 
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To paraphrase, tea is the second most consumed beverage in my life, after water :)
Thanks so much for this essay! Without your knowledge and sharing, I would still be calling Chinese 紅茶 as red tea, but it's actually black tea in English.
a beautiful exposition of Tea.