Kung Fu in a Cup of Tea
One day, being an apprentice, I was drinking tea with my teacher.
We had just finished a class on traditional medicine, and it had been some time since my last physical training. Some weeks before I had taken some lessons on ancient rites and history, and now I was just hearing that, starting the following week, we would start studying the Tea Ceremony. So I asked my teacher what all these things had to do with the fact that I was studying Kung Fu.
He poured some tea into my cup and said, “Take a sip of tea, but pay no attention to anything other than the sensation of heat inside your mouth. Forget all other things, the flavour, the odour, everything. Just concentrate on the heat.” I tried to do as asked and after that he continued, “Now take another sip, but this time only pay attention to the bitterness of the tea, and to no other thing.”
After the second sip came twenty-six more, and on each occasion I was asked to shift my attention to a new place: the herbal quality of the tea’s flavor, its pale color, the weight of the cup in my hand, the shapes that the vapor made in the air, the posture of my body as I drank, the heat of the cup in my fingertips, the sound of the cup as it returned to the saucer, the reflections of light in the liquid surface, and even the memory of the tea after drinking. Every time something that had never been brought to my attention just jumped to my conscience, and the total sensation may be expressed as if suddenly one would be able to watch from above and from behind a painting he knows well. A painting one has seen for years, watching only the surface, is suddenly seen in all its depth, all its angles.
After all this, he filled my cup yet again and told me, “Now, take a sip of tea. If you are able to do it, then you will be doing Kung Fu.”
He went on, “Certainly, you can practice Kung Fu in a combat, because it forces you to a level of awareness which is uncommon, where every detail is seen as essential: every movement and every breath are fundamental. During combat, things which are usually done mechanically, without conscience, come fully into your attention. But in reality, you can practice Kung Fu in all things: walking in a garden, writing a letter, having a conversation with a good friend, or even drinking a cup of tea. Kung Fu is not something you do, but the way you do things. It is the Art of Perfection, the Art of Depth.”
