The Way of Tea, (a way to a Kensho with tea?)

Kensho - a Zen term for a type of enlightenment.

If had had to describe the effect of this book on me, it would have to have been a form of enlightenment. It might just be I read this book at the proper time, and many different things fell together, but let me use the picture to help elaborate on how this book helped open my eyes to tea.

This book focuses extensively on appreciating tea for tea, and not attaching value to things real or perceived, just let them help make tea for you wonderful. The three Adagio tins in the picture are left over from a series of sampler packs I got over a year ago, simply put I did not like them, upon first taste and I set them aside basically forgetting about them. The Yixing in the picture was one of the two yixings I got on my first purchase, something I always considered as a bad purchase, and I resigned to the fact of placing it on a shelf for a bit of decoration.

But, somehow this book inspired me to try again, well as the yixing is incredibly large for my usual brewing, I looked at the adagio tins, and said, this would make a great teapot for casual brewing Hong cha (red tea). So I got it out and it made an absolutely delicious brew. But my mind was not on the quality of the leaf, nor the fact that the teapot was unable to pour without leaking even rather close to empty. My mind was on taking the tea for what it was.

This brings up a point that Tim over at the Mandarins Tea Blog wrote about the other day involving leaving prejudices about tea or basically everything behind before brewing the tea, and just let the leaf speak for you.

This book will teach you how to enjoy tea for tea, and it might just help you along the way to enlightenment as to the big picture of tea.

This book is not for you if you are not into the spiritual aspect of tea, or feel a scientific approach to tea is the only way to get good results.

I hope you get a chance to pick up this book, it truly a joy to read.