Wu De

All tea lessons are life lessons, there is no such thing as a mistake. If you are learning then they are lessons not mistakes. Let go of the desire to control everything.

What is the practice of sitting with tea? 
Tea is a practice in listening, it teaches us to listen and then to celebrate the ordinary, to stop seeking other and to realize you are already immersed in miracles. Mystery is a part of life, and being in a healthy relationship with mystery, like any healthy relationship, is about trust. Allowing the outcome to be what it is starts to engender a growing faith in the universe and in our ability to navigate and manage whatever happens. 

How did you start on your path? 
I had a high degree of trauma at an early age and a very tough upbringing which led to drug issues when I was a teenager. Fortunately, I woke up from that at the age of 18, got sober and turned my life around. I was in college, and on breaks I started going on a lot of vipassana retreats.

Was there an aha tea moment?
Yes, it was love at first sight - like lightning. I was at a vipassana retreat and someone serving  the retreat was distracting to me. He had just gotten back from China and he gave me this bag of weird looking white tea leaves that had just been picked. I was so in love. I couldn’t stop opening the bag and smelling it. So 3 weeks later, I called him in a panic because the tea had started to lose its aroma! 

Why do you think you fell in love with tea? 
The master asks why tea, and why not cabbage soup. There is as much truth in tea as there is in cabbage soup. Tea is my love, it is the door through which divinity finds its way into my life. I can’t exist outside of that because it’s all encompassing. When you are fully in love, you can’t go to a time in your memory before you were fully in love because even when you go back, that love is there. 

How are we connected to tea? 
There is no way to talk about this connection without becoming a bit ungrounded - and I always like to tell you when we are leaving the ground. I believe that we are star-fated with this plant. One of the origin stories of tea centers around a character called Shennong who was the founder of Chinese medicine. He is meditating in the forest and the tea leaf falls into the boiling water, and he pronounces it the empress/king of all medicinal herbs. The leaf falling into his boiling water, that is not meant to be arbitrary chaos, it is not a coincidence. It didn't fall, it jumped. The plant kingdom was looking for a representative to communicate on its behalf with people, and it chose tea.

So tea is a messenger? 
I like to see tea as an avatar of love, of Mother Nature’s love for us. The earth’s language is life, she talks through life and tea helps us understand what she is saying. Tea is a translator. 

What makes tea so powerful?
Tea is the second most consumed substance on planet earth after water. The chemistry of this plant was engineered to be part of our body as a form of communication. Tea is hospitality, kindness and warmth, that is what makes it so universal, spanning the spectrum from monks in retreat to construction workers and grannies! One of my favorite quotes is from Winnie the Pooh, when Piglet says to Christoper Robin “Come inside and see if a pot of tea can make the world a better place” 

Why is working with tea a valuable practice? 
This is a challenging question. It is hard to take decades of practice and study and put it into succinct form. There is a saying in zen, “until your practice is good for nothing, it won't be good for anything.” The main point is that we invest a lot of our emotional and mental energy into outcomes. There is a whole lot of spirituality that is taking meditation and selling it as performance enhancement, and that is not buddhism. It is more about taking the energy we invest in outcomes, and putting it into what I am doing right now. Lots of little “nows” done well results in something. 

How does this apply to sitting with Tea?
Tea has to be like the way we listen to music, the goal isn’t to get to the end. We are not trying to be done, there is nowhere to get to, we are just learning to do something for its own sake. All tea lessons are life lessons, there is no such thing as a mistake. If you are learning then they are lessons not mistakes. 

How does working with tea compare to other plant medicines? 
With a lot of plant medicines, say Ayahuasca, you are going into the plant kingdom and they don’t care about you! And because the plant kingdom is so foreign, sometimes people come back and don’t get the proper integration.  Tea is the opposite; it integrates immediately on all levels, because it is the plant kingdom coming to you, there is directionality in that relationship. 

How would you suggest starting to work with tea in a more ceremonial way? 
1. Let go of all parameters 
2. Just put leaves in a bowl and add water (try to use leaves that were harvested in a sustainable way!)
3. No multitasking, just drink tea 
4. And do it in silence. 

See for yourself if this simple act can bring any change in your life. 

What else are you passionate about? 
How do you love the leaf without loving the forest? All the matters I care about are related to the environment. We are fully carbon neutral in our business, and all the tea we share is grown sustainably and organically.

What other rituals are part of your daily practice? 
I meditate 2 to 3 hours a day, and I pray, study sutras and chant everyday as well. 

What do you keep on your bedside table?
I don’t sleep in a bed! But there is an alarm clock next to my tatami mat. 

What is the best advice you've ever gotten?
This is my practice. We think we have to do more meditation, but it's taking our meditation mind and applying it to everything we do. 

3 things that bring you joy
Tea, all the amazing people in my life, and music! I think it is important for spiritual people to have a hobby or worldly passion that doesn’t get out of hand - otherwise we can get very serious! 

3 books you recommend
I am going to give you 5! 

1. Treasury of the True Dharma Eye
2. Bodhicharyavatara (The Way of the Bodhisattva)
3. Dhammapada
4. Tao Te Ching
5. Zhuangzi