the loneliness of the way
In many ways the beginning of 茶道, the way of tea, for me was in Manila. Living in Mabuhay Temple, the Chinese auntie who came in with her crystals and gold, silk shirts, antique yixing tea ware and delicate porcelains sat us down with 肉餅/hopia and proceeded to brew a Tie Guan Yin oolong for all 15 or so of us retreat members. She had her Filipino helpers set up a driftwood table with a built-in drain, her kettles, and a set of smelling cups and drinking cups. She told us about the story of the oolong, an Iron Guan Yin statue blessing a devotee with the tea leaves, as green as jade. Her yixing cups coated with glaze on the inside smelled fragrant as she showed us how to hold the cup gently, like the hand of a beloved, warming the walls of the clay to help the scent rise up into the air. She told us to take a bite of the hopia made of mung bean, and as we drank said to see if we could see how the flavor changed, how every brew was different, bringing out more and more notes. Could we be mindful of this?
Almost everyone didn’t seem to care much, the troublemakers making noise, the rest just grateful to be eating. It was later in the day and we were all starving from Kung Fu drills, cleaning the temple, and learning about Ch’an meditation and Mahayana Buddhist theory. But the way she returned again and again to show us how to hold the lid of the pot, how to hold the gaiwan, trying her best to stay calm in the face of students refusing to listen to her—it told me something about how the way of tea supported her Buddhist practice. She reminded us of the Guan Yin outside, holding her vase of holy water out into the world, blessing us with compassion over and over again, how the taste of oolong spread in our mouths much like this benediction.
The first person I drank tea in this way with again was a man I met in Kaohsiung, the last month of my stay with Fo Guang Shan. It was a budding romance as I balanced the decision to continue with this path or to return to the world. One day, he invited me to walk down from our mountaintop monastery to the visiting hall at the foot of the mountain to drink tea. We walked around and decided to try some tea. The lady offered us some oolong and we drank together, savoring the flavor, my heart turning towards the world again. He asked the tea host to snap a photo of us as we drank the tea, thanked her for her time, and left.
After that, tea was mostly a lonely affair for me. After having married him and moving to San Francisco, when I picked up the way of the tea, it was not something we would do much together, as I thought we would. The strain of our issues, our diverging paths slowly becoming evident. Once I cooked a Lunar New Year’s meal for us and prepared some tea and he refused to join, citing a moon day, wearing all white. I sat and finished the dumplings myself, brewed myself some tea for the night, the celadon cup clinking on the glass pitcher as I poured the tea, clear and hued. What was love like, I asked myself, what was partnership like. The tea splashed and looked, for a second like a quiet river being pooled into a vessel.
Of course, it wasn’t like we didn’t have tea together, but the times I sat down for tea and invited him to join were spurned too many times, in such violent ways, that perhaps it was wise that I acknowledged the beginning separation for what it was instead of hoping it would go away.
We shared many meals with tea together, but these times are always coupled with a memory of his impatience, his dislike of something or the other. I think in our marriage, he only sat down for tea with me alone twice. Near the end of our marriage, I took out jasmine mung bean cakes, some pastries, made some dumplings, brewed some jasmine pearls a Mandarin teacher gave us and invited him to sit. He grabbed a few dumplings and left the room.
Of course, other times he joined in when his friends or our friends would come, happily chatting. Those were good nights filled with soft music, small clouds of incense, and tea, late into the night.
After he announced he was leaving for an attempt at being a monk, I didn’t drink tea with anyone for a long time. I often brewed tea for myself in my room, at first meditating so hard at his urging, him asking me to follow him into his path. At night I would brew a bitter mix of chrysanthemum, chamomile, and valerian root in my gaiwan and gulp it down, praying for sleep to take over sooner so I would no longer have to cry. The first month of that separation, I would wake up and sit intently, brew a cup, praying for the same sense of renunciation to appear within me again. I wanted to follow him because I still loved him. And one day I found that I had to stop. It became clear: it was not my path now. I would brew tea for myself to wake up at first, and eventually stopped. It didn’t feel right to brew tea now, something I had hoped to keep doing with this man for the rest of my life. The way of tea, the way of Buddha Dharma felt so utterly lonely now. There was no one in the Bay I could sit with to explain my sadness to, no one in the Bay who could say: this was unfair but your acceptance of it is also virtuous, also good, also strong. Instead I dismantled my shrine, put away my gold statues, returned further into the world.
One of the last things we did together was to have tea. He insisted upon it and at the time I only obliged because I missed drinking tea with someone. I began brewing occasionally for myself at our NYC apartment, the one I asked him to join me in for my immigration’s sake and for his sake—he was falling in love with an ex and had hoped to pursue a life with him. I told him if he wanted to truly be a monk he should leave this man behind and begin pursuing his intention of renunciation more definitely.
This night that we drank tea, he was on his way to a meditation group that I had always wanted to attend, that I’d stayed with prior to our move to the city. I stayed away for his whole time here because I didn’t want for us to be associated together then, I wanted him to build his own way into the path. It didn’t feel right to stand by him as a companion in this way when he had stopped being mine, even as a friend. This night we drank together, I enjoyed the teas and for an hour we were back to being old friends. As we left the distance grew larger and larger. He asked me to join him for a sit, but it was much too painful. After all, how could I return to the faith that brought me this much pain?
Only when I look back now do I see the importance of this moment. He was asking me to relive the things we did together as a farewell. Tea was one of the things we did. But at that point, I didn’t need a farewell from him. I just needed him to be kind.
Our time together in New York has been perhaps one of the most painful ones in my life. After this tea session, he would call me an enemy who was forcing him to stay in the world. He was quite selfish in his method of renouncing. I couldn’t say it then, but now I can. I can acknowledge it now and begin to heal. Even though New York has opened many old scars, created dark times in my heart, it also reminded me of friends I could have outside of this, good friends who still stuck around after our marriage and friends I knew from back then, and friends I was about to make.
I slowly began to pick up the way of tea again. An old friend from our time in Kaohsiung, who knew us from the beginning of our relationship visited New York. She invited me to come try out tea houses with her, places I didn’t think I would ever go to. She sat down in a tea house and listened to my story, held space for me, and acknowledged the pain I had endured in that relationship: the racism, the privilege, the harshness of it all. For once, I was allowed to acknowledge the wholesome and the unwholesome in how he treated me. It felt that all our other Buddhist friends during our marriage had never once let me do that. The loneliness eased a little bit. I could begin to heal then. I didn’t have to revere him as a saint just because his actions now are purer: I could still say that in the past, he was unwholesome and he hurt me in many ways. I didn’t have to deny that that had happened just because he was a holy man now.
So now the way of tea has taught me, much as it did earlier on, that it was a way to hold space for myself and others. It could bring me peace again, much like how my return to the Dharma on my own terms, not one manipulated by my feelings for someone, brought me ease. So I begin opening my space, holding space for those who need this same healing. My friends in dharma and tea taught me these same things, reminding me that I am able to hold space for others to express their griefs and that I can trust others to hold space for me in this way. I’m always grateful for this lesson. The way of tea taught me that. There is still camaraderie and companionship in this world. Living and the way to enlightenment of any sort, for being useful to the world is inherently lonely, but what tea has shown me is that it can occasionally be a little less lonely.
Nowadays I begin picking up the gaiwan, pour tea in my own tea room, invite people to come. I want to be open again. I want to share grief and joy to those who want to. To acknowledge our hearts and to always, always be able to say hello anyway. A tea tray I have says that the fragrance of tea fills the room. I want to say: the fragrance of a listened heart also fills the room, and tea helps that happen.
