China's avenue is the way of life. On the one hand, the heavens and the earth are not benevolent to all things, thorough and ruthless, and will not change the laws of natural operation because of personal will. On the other hand, the heavens and the earth are full of vitality, constantly moving and transforming, among which there is the potential, possibility, opportunity, and hope for growth. Tea and Chinese medicine are the two wings of traditional Chinese culture, which is currently the highest level of chinese tea ceremony thought.
In the evolution of the long river of history, tea culture covers tea, tea utensils, tea brewing water, tea rooms (architecture and decoration), tea books, tea paintings, tea handicrafts, tea packaging and other physical carriers, covering tea ceremony, tea ceremony, tea art, tea ceremony, tea ceremony, tea customs, tea banquets and other social and cultural cultures, covering tea poetry, tea lyrics, tea songs, tea songs, tea dances, tea texts, tea calligraphy and painting, opera, etc., but also covers tea plant varieties, planting, tea garden maintenance, tea processing, evaluation, tea physical and chemical analysis, comprehensive utilization of tea and other natural science and technology. A huge cultural system was constructed. This system is most fully reflected in Yao Guokun's book "Chinese Tea Culture".
However, the concepts of tea culture, tea ceremony, tea art, tea cultivation, and tea ceremony philosophy must have some emphasis. Ding Yishou's three volumes of "Chinese Tea Culture", "Chinese Tea Ceremony" and "Chinese Tea Art" are both focused and systematic, and the history of the development of Chinese tea culture, tea ceremony and tea art is explained in detail. However, for contemporary people, what kind of practice is the tea ceremony? This is the point of the clumsy attempt to discuss. This involves three propositions: first, tea and nature; second, tea and society; and third, tea and self. Nowadays, a variety of tea-related behaviors are all-encompassing, intertwined, and metaphysical content is involved in various fields, making it difficult to summarize metaphysically. Tea and society express the social attributes of tea, and are different from each other, beauty and coexistence (World Tea Day). Tea and nature express the natural science properties of tea, tea is not a medicine but like a medicine (Chen Zongmao), the current research in both aspects is very in-depth, there are many works. Only the summary of the relationship between tea and self needs to be deepened.
The tea ceremony in humble works focuses on the proposition of "tea and self", which is similar to "tea cultivation" and "tea ceremony health", reflecting people's physical use and understanding of tea.
The term "tea ceremony" first appeared in the Tang Dynasty's Kyaoran's poem "Drinking Tea And Saying Cui Shi Jun": "A drink is dim, and the feelings are refreshing and full of heaven and earth." Drink my god again, and suddenly sprinkle light dust like a flying rain. If you drink three times, you will be enlightened, so why bother to break through your troubles? This thing is unknown to the world. The world drinks a lot of self-deception. Many scholars have pointed out that this poem is the earliest source of the word "tea ceremony". However, the "tea ceremony" in this one reflects the proposition of "tea and self", which is a unique philosophical understanding of the "purity" of tea, which many people may not notice, or pay too much attention to the educational significance of tea (social attributes) and ignore the fact that tea can cultivate (tea and self).
Many scholars use the concept of exegesis to find the four words "jingxing and frugal virtue" from the Lu Yu Tea Classic, take it as an interpretation of the Lu Yu Tea Ceremony, and define it as the spiritual connotation of the Chinese Tea Ceremony. Even the four words of "fine practice and frugality" are still a continuation of the proposition of "tea and self". However, after all, Lu Yu is different from Kyaukran, Lu Yu's vision is broader, and the tea ceremony thought is more ostentatious, "governing a big country is like cooking small fresh", using tea to cultivate morality, in order to achieve the ideal of life of cultivating oneself and cultivating oneself and ruling the country and the world. This is the background color of The Lu Yu Tea Ceremony, but also the cultural background of the Chinese scholar-doctor class, the mainstream of the tea ceremony philosophy, the main aesthetic temperament of the Chinese tea ceremony, belonging to the aesthetic mentality of the "scholar-doctor class", is a kind of quaint and natural physical environment, and the materialized expression of the gentle temperament of the style. In Wang Xufeng's "Tea Man Trilogy", Hang Tiandrun is a typical character of this kind of tea person doctor, and the contrast with Shen Luai, Red Shirt Er, and Zhao Jike more clearly reflects this feature.
The culmination of Chinese philosophy is that man and heaven and earth are connected, man and heaven and earth are one, and heaven and earth are one, and heaven and man are one, which is the ideal of Chinese philosophy, and tea is one of the ways. Tea people, people in the grass. Tea inherits the essence of heaven and earth, people come to heaven and earth through tea, and tea is one of the best mediums for communicating people and the universe of heaven and earth. This is the Confucian tea philosophy of cultivating wisdom with tea; this is the tea philosophy of the Shi family; and the tea philosophy of the Taoists is to gain the communication between heaven and earth by nourishing the body with tea. The tea ceremony has the distinction of Confucianism and Buddhism, and different types of people have different views on tea, or different people have different worldviews and methodologies through the carrier of tea.
The confucian tea ceremony philosophy is summarized, which leads to a hot topic of contemporary tea culture, tea ceremony health, which corresponds to the proposition of "tea and self". Tea cultivation is actually closer to tea ceremony health. Lin Zhi's "Tea Ceremony Health Is Right and Wrong" is a masterpiece in this regard, and the two sides of a coin combine the social and natural attributes of tea. There are many more works in this regard, such as Wang Yuefei's "Tea Culture and Tea Health".
However, how exactly is the tea ceremony practiced? In contemporary times, tea culture is highly mature and prosperous, and many tea people, experts and scholars have a strong understanding of the concept of "tea ceremony" on the cultural level, and it is difficult to have a new perspective. How ordinary people use it physically, how to operate microscopically, is still not very transparent, Li Hui's "Commentary on the Tea Ceremony Sutra" is a relatively new perspective. Cultivating Zen to become a Buddha, cultivating into immortals, cultivating into sanctification, this is the ideal other shore, Li Hui's "Commentary on the Tea Ceremony Sutra" provides a model of Chinese meridians and tea ceremony health.
It is not the tea that determines the level of taste of the person, but how high the tea drinker is, how high the tea is, it is the tea drinker who decides the height of the tea, not the tea that determines the height of the tea drinker. There will be no "Tao" distinction between sencha, tea ordering, and tea making, and it cannot be said that those who like sencha and those who like to order tea have higher taste than others. Similarly, there is no "Tao" distinction between green tea, white tea, yellow tea, oolong tea, black tea, black tea, and reprocessed tea, and there is no need to step on other teas because of your own tea. This view is known as the "philosophy of opening soup", which focuses on the tea itself, not on what tea to drink. Ding Yishou's "Interpretation of the Chinese Tea Ceremony" said: Chinese tea ceremony, the way of drinking tea, drinking tea is the way, drinking tea is the way, drinking tea is the way. The same is true.
Tea has always absorbed the historical mission and social responsibility of Chinese civilization, and more people will use tea to perceive the ideological connotation of enlightenment, bring thoughts and actions together, integrate knowledge and action, and jointly participate in a larger social mission, a national mission and the mission of building a new pattern of mankind. (Text: Xi Binfeng, tea noble producer. ）