Hello tea friends, here is the tea in the end.
China has a long history of tea drinking and a profound tea culture, which has led to the emergence of many tea lovers.
Among the tea people who are as bright as the sea of stars, tea saint Lu Yu is naturally the most shining one.
However, in the Tang Dynasty, there was also a tea person who could be as famous as Lu Yu, who was known as the "Tea Immortal".
Today, let's take a look at Lu Tong's story.
1. Retreat in the mountains
Lu Tong (c. 795 – 835 CE), who called himself Yuchuanzi, was born in Sili Village, Wushan Town, Jiyuan City, Henan Province, with his ancestral home in Fanyang (Zhuozhou, Hebei Province).
Lu Tong was born into a famous family, and he was one of the "Four Masters of the Early Tang Dynasty" and a descendant of the famous poet Lu Zhaolin.
Although he was born into a famous and prestigious family, but passed down to Lu Tong's generation, the family has long lost any foundation, and the family is very poor.
The poor family situation made Lu Tong establish the ambition of studying hard from an early age, and he was intelligent and studious at an early age, reading a lot of books.
In the village where Lu Tong grew up, there was a pomegranate temple at that time, which doubled as a village school, and Lu Tong went to school here.
Lu Tong was bright since childhood, and the monks in the temple drank tea every day, which left a deep impression on him.
The monks of Pomegranate Temple sat in meditation late at night, and they were not allowed to eat, only tea "hit the eyes", and Lu Tong also followed the monks to do so one by one.
Over time, Lu Tong fell in love with drinking tea.
When Lu Tong was sixteen years old, his mother sent him to his uncle in Yangzhou to learn to do tea business.
During his stay in Yangzhou, Lu Tong went to the Zen Temple to meet the Zen master of the Buddha.
He saw that the Zen master meditated and meditated every day, and felt sincere admiration, so he stayed behind to meditate with the Zen master.
Lu Tong later wrote a poem "Gift to the Zen Master", describing what he saw and heard:
The spring breeze fills the Zen Temple, and the teacher sits alone in Nanxuan.
All the things are seen in the middle, and the first sense of stillness is respected.
I came to Qi Pingsheng and witnessed the Tao's own existence.
Do not move with the division, swim this without a trace of the door.
As an adult, Lu Tong left home and lived in seclusion in Luoyang, Songshan and Yangzhou, living in poverty and only preferring to drink tea.
During the Zhenyuan Dynasty, Lu Tong lived in Yangzhou, where he bought a simple house and lived a life of reading and living idly.
Around the fifteenth year of Zhenyuan, Lu Tong left Yangzhou to return to Jiyuan, and resolutely lived in seclusion in front of the Jiyuan Flower Cave under Wangwu Mountain, half cultivating and half reading, asking Zen to make tea.
In order to learn Buddhism from the ice boy next to the flower cave, Lu Tong bought a field here and left a song "Ice Monk who will return to the mountain":
I love this dusty thing in my heart.
Want to dust diplomacy, bitter and dustless bones.
There is an ice gong in the spring, and the mind is still to see the true Buddha.
Can dust diplomacy, accounting for this loose and monthly.
After living in seclusion in Jiyuan for several years, Lu Tong bought a mansion on credit in Renfang, Luoyang, and continued to live a life of seclusion.
According to records, Lu Tong's family was poor, and there was nothing else in the broken house, only books piled up in the room.
During his move to Luoyang, Lu Tong relied on the monks in the temple next door to deliver rice to feed him, and relied on cold water and monks' alms every day to survive.
In the winter of the fourth year of Yuan He, Lu Tong went to Yangzhou to sell the house to pay off debts, and moved the only remaining books in Yangzhou's hometown back to Luoyang.
Lu Tong's life was basically spent in seclusion in this way, he was poor and happy, and did not change his ambitions because of the hardships of life.
II. "Seven Bowls of Tea Song"
Although Lu Tong came from a Confucian family, he liked to interact with senior monks and study Buddhism.
His tea system has always been permeated with confucian and Taoist health care ideas, and eventually developed his sencha concept.
In the sixth year of Tang Yuanhe, Lu Tong received tea from his friend Meng Jian, and invited Han Yu, Jia Dao, and others to boil and drink at Peach Blossom Spring, and the famous "Seven Bowls of Tea Song" was born:
One bowl of throat kisses, two bowls are broken and lonely.
Three bowls of dry intestines, only five thousand volumes of writing.
Four bowls of light sweat, ordinary life, all scattered to the pores.
Five bowls of muscle and bone clear, six bowls of fairy spirit.
Seven bowls can not eat also, only to feel the two armpits to learn the breeze.
Penglai Mountain, where? Tamagawako took advantage of this breeze to return.
The immortals on the mountain descended the soil, and the status was clear and high to withstand the wind and rain.
Ann learned that hundreds of billions of lives had fallen on a cliff and suffered hardships.
So he asked Cangsheng for advice, and in the end he had to give su shi or not.
"Seven Bowls of Tea Song" is the third part and the most wonderful part of "Walking Pen Xie Meng's Advice to Send New Tea".
In his poems, Lu Tong uniquely sublimates the aesthetics of tea drinking into the realm of the spiritual world, expresses his love and hatred thoughts from the chest, and praises the spirit of the tea ceremony that returns to simplicity and simplicity.
This is in stark contrast to the exuberant and luxurious style advocated by the tea drinking activities at that time, and even plays a role in objectively countering.
For Lu Tong, tea is not just a kind of drink, tea seems to create a vast spiritual world for him, and raises the drinking of tea to an extraordinary realm.
When you concentrate on drinking tea, you can forget the world, abandon all fame and fortune, and float to the immortals.
All worries and worries, thousands of complexes, have been dissolved here, and have become a breeze born of habits.
This is a general perception of life in the universe, a thorough purification of the emotions of life.
The whole process of this magical drink of pure soul is vividly presented under Lu Tong's pen.
However, the most praiseworthy thing is that Lu Tong, in addition to emphasizing the aesthetics, function and pleasure of tea tasting, also puts the realm of tea tasting in drinking water without forgetting the gratitude and sympathy of the people who dig wells, and looks at the hard work of millions of tea farmers in the world.
To become an immortal and go straight to Penglai, not for the sake of the people, but for the sake of the people.
His feeling of "caring for the world" is deeply moving and thought-provoking.
If Lu Tong's "Seven Bowls of Tea Song" expresses romantic and elegant feelings, then this section of asking for the people condenses the solemn theme of reality, sublimating from the realm of tasting and drinking to the broad mind of Puji Cangsheng.
Although tea tasting makes drinkers feel immortal, tea people do not dissolve the uneven meaning in the tea.
On the contrary, we should pay more sober attention to the national economy and people's livelihood, and the ideal and belief of "self-cultivation, family unity, governance of the country, and peace in the world" are more clear and firm in tea tasting.
Third, the death of the dark
Lu Tong's personality was straight and lonely, indifferent to fame and fortune, and especially disgusted with the evil politics of the officialdom, so he did not enter the scientific examination all his life, was not seduced by the high-ranking official Houlu, refused to pursue a career, and was known for his poverty.
The imperial court heard of Lu Tong's talents and twice recruited him as a counselor (official position wupin), but he hated the dictatorship of the eunuchs of the imperial court and despised the dirty officialdom, so he refused all the conscriptions.
As he wrote in his poem "Winter", "The upper does not know the Son of Heaven, and the lower does not know the king." ”
From his later poems such as "Lunar Eclipse Poems", "Walking Brush Xie Mengzhi To Send New Tea" and "Dragonfly Song", it can be seen that although he did not forget the officialdom, he cared about the people's livelihood and longed for political wisdom.
However, unfortunately, throughout his life, Lu Tong did not see the peaceful and prosperous world he demanded, and he could only spend his life in poverty and illness.
In 835, the "Ganlu Revolution" occurred in Chang'an, and Lu Tong was killed by eunuchs at the same time as Wang Ya because he stayed in the home of Wang Ya, the chancellor and the envoy of Jiangnan Tea.
The eunuch's methods were extremely cruel, and they saw that Lu Tong was old and hairless, so they nailed a nail in the back of his head and persecuted him to death.
Lu Tong's good friend Jia Dao once wrote in the poem "Crying Lu Tong": "Chang'an has friends, and the orphans abandon and move." "Forty years in his life, he wears only white cloth."
Lu Tong ended his life lonely, although his life was short, but it was wonderful enough.
He was a poet, a hermit, and a tea lover of all time.
In the Tang Dynasty, Lu Yu's "Tea Classic" and Lu Tong's "Tea Recipe" can be called the double bi in the history of tea.
Lu Yu's "Tea Classic" comprehensively discusses the origin, production and drinking knowledge of tea, and opens the precedent of the tea ceremony.
Lu Tong's "Walking Pen Xie Mengzhi To Send New Tea" vividly describes the picking, making, drinking and spiritual aspects of tea in the form of a song line.
Opening up the interesting cultural category of people using tea to entertain, making friends with tea, mingzhi with tea and tasting tea, this poem has become a popular song for the people.
If Lu Yu's "Tea Classic" founded the Chinese tea ceremony, then Lu Tong's "Seven Bowls of Tea Poems" developed the Chinese tea ceremony and made indelible contributions to the spread of tea culture in the Tang Dynasty.
His "tea poems" expound the essence of the tea ceremony in the language of poetry.
Thus opening up the artistic conception of tea tasting, and summarizing the process of spiritual sublimation of tea people enjoying material enjoyment when tasting tea.
For thousands of years, Lu Tong's "Tea Drinking Song" has not only spread well in the sea, but also became famous overseas.
The story will always be told, and the tea will eventually be drunk, but Lu Tong's literati style and his poems are the eternal wealth of the Chinese nation and will never fade.