The Rich Roll Podcast - Zen & The Art & Importance of Living Tea

Episode Date: May 25, 2014

Today we delve into an entirely new world. The world of tea. I can hear you now: Tea?? Really? Why should I care about tea? I've been enjoying the podcast a lot lately, Rich. But I'm not sure about this…I think you might have lost the thread this week.  A couple years ago I would have probably said the same thing. I don't feel that way anymore. So if you are thinking of skipping this episode because on the surface it doesn't sound like something you are interested in, reconsider. Because — and as I always say — contempt prior to investigation imprisons one to everlasting ignorance. WuDe. Born in the United States as Aaron Daniel Fisher, Wude was drawn to the East from a very early age. After studying philosophy in college, he travelled the world and ultimately settled in Taiwan, where he has since become a Buddhist monk – steeped in the sutras and wisdom of that tradition – as well as a tea master – a vituoso of not just the living tradition of harvesting tea, but the living tradition of what tea means in a sort of meta sense – why it’s important and why we should care about it. Tea as medicine. Tea as healing. Tea as life. Tea Practice as Zen. The easiest way to put it is that WuDe comes from this idea that tea is a universal living, breathing thing that unifies us all — the tree of life. Think of tea as a metaphor. A foundational concept around which to structure a set of ancient teachings, principles, knowledge and wisdom to glean a broader truth about health, healing, community, the environment, life, life’s meaning and the unifying oneness – or undeniable interconnectedness of everything In Taiwan WuDe founded and runs Global Tea Hut– a school and center devoted to the education and preservation of the ancient tradition of harvesting living tea and welcomes people from all over the world to come study and practice tea preparation, meditation, tea history, tea crafting, the sutras of tea and its relevance in society, and how to cultivate the Dao of Tea as a method of spiritual expansion. I realize today's guest and these topics may be slightly off your personal reservation. That's cool – it was for me initially as well. All I ask is that you set aside whatever preconceived notions you may be harboring and enter this episode with an open mind. Do that, and I assure you will come out the other side with not only a new and informed view on the import of tea, but a greater understanding of Zen. An expanded perspective on consciousness. And a heightened awareness of the oneness that unites us all. WuDe spills over with crazy mad wisdom that more than merits your attention and contemplation. I promise this just might be the most fascinating conversation you will hear all week. I sincerely hope you enjoy the show. Let me know what you think in the comments below! Peace + Plants, Rich

Welcome to the Rich Roll Podcast, Episode 87, with Buddhist monk and tea master, Wuda. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. How y'all doing? Greetings. I am your friendly neighborhood podcast host, Rich Roll. Welcome to my show, The Rich Roll Podcast, which I affectionately call the hashtag RRP, my internet meme-worthy pet name for the show. All right, you guys, I'm going to make a deal with you. Are you ready? Here's the deal. On a weekly basis, and for free, I might add, I commit to bringing you the best, most forward-thinking, paradigm-busting minds in wellness, fitness, athleticism,

creativity, diet, nutrition, art, entrepreneurship, personal growth, and spirituality, and the tools, the knowledge, the inspiration you need to take your life to the next level. In exchange for this, you will do the following. You are going to take all this in. You're going to synthesize it. You're going to ruminate it on it.

You're going to ponder it. You're going to write about it. You're going to dream about it. Maybe you'll share it with others. And then you are going to put it to work. You're going to use it to uncover, discover, unlock, and unleash your best, most authentic self. Deal. Do we have a deal?

I think we got a deal. Good deal. All right. Wuda. Wuda. Say what? Wuda? What is a Wuda?

Ah, Rich, I've been enjoying your podcast so much lately, but I think maybe you might have lost the thread this week. What is going on here? Patience, you guys. Interviewing well-known people is really fun, I admit. It's always cool when you have a celebrity or a quasi-celebrity on the show, somebody with a big following, et cetera. But you know what's really cool and what's way more fun and what gets my juices flowing is introducing you guys to people you ordinarily or most likely would never discover on your own or possibly never even hear about. But people I've had the good fortune to have in my life who brim with wisdom and experiences and a unique and compelling and sometimes iconoclastic point of view. All in all people, I think that we should all know

and giving these people a microphone is the best. I love it. And Wuda is one of those guys, one of those guys. You see, we have this friend, he's called Colin Hudon and Colin is an interesting cat. He's one of those Renaissance type guys that has traveled the world and knows all kinds of fascinating people

and finds intrigue in paths left to field and always has amazing stories. And he's really, you know, he's been a good family friend for many, many years at this point. And he's currently studying Chinese medicine here in LA. And the interesting thing that kind of brings it back to today is that Colin's biggest passion is tea. It's kind of weird, right? Like tea, like who's fascinated with tea? Like what is so interesting about tea? At least that's what I

thought at the time or what I used to think. And the story goes like this. A couple years ago, Colin was running a tea house in Venice called Temple Tea. If you read my blog post on Tim Ferriss' site on superfoods, it posted like two years ago. It was a long time ago. But if you did read it, maybe you would recall that one of the superfoods that I listed was Pura Tea. And you might also recall that in describing my experience with Pura Tea, I gave Colin and his tea house, Temple Tea, a shout out in that post. And anyway, Colin invited us down to experience a traditional Chinese tea ceremony at his tea house. And to be honest, at the time, this was a while ago, I wasn't sure I was all that interested. I was open, but I was like,

I don't know, what is this all about really? You know, I didn't really know what to expect. And long story short, it ended up being an incredible, amazing experience. It was a group of about eight of us that gathered around a low slung table as Colin carefully and quite deliberately served up this Pura tea, which is considered a powerful healing and somewhat medicinal brew aged from ancient living Chinese tea trees. tea trees, and he served it up with exquisite precision and a dedication to ceremony. All told, it was about three hours that we spent in total silence, no talking, as Colin prepared the tea, poured it. He would pour it in all eight cups in a row and then push the cups out to us individually. We would silently drink the tea, push our cup back, and he would repeat the process again and again and again in a kind of wax on, wax off sort of way. And it seems odd and it's very difficult to kind of articulate it, but it was a powerful and sort of indescribable experience.

It was incredibly meditative. It was mesmerizing. It was calming and it was transformative. It was followed up by Colin answering questions about what he was doing and why he was doing it and educating us on the finer points of tea and tea ceremony and what this was all about and what it all means. And at the end, I felt like I just spent a week in a spa. It was extraordinary. And ever since that evening, I have been converted and have gotten much more interested in this world and learning more about it. And so has my wife and our kids. Tyler, my oldest, who produces this podcast, he even celebrated his birthday at Temple T two years ago. And he loves it.

Temple T doesn't exist anymore. And we get into that a little bit in the podcast, and that's a little bit of an aside. But in any event, last year, Colin asked us if we would be interested in meeting and enjoying another traditional tea ceremony, but this time with a true tea master visiting from Taiwan, this Zen Buddhist monk called Wuda, right? And I said, sure, cool. You know, why not, right? Like I'm down with Zen and who doesn't want to meet a guy named Wuda, right? So we were going to do this at our house and Colin shows up at our house along with his tea enthusiast friends, Brandon Boyd. Yes, that Brandon Boyd, the Brandon Boyd of Incubus.

And Brandon's lovely girlfriend, Baylen, and this guy called Wuda. So suddenly this little event at our house has taken on a distinctly super cool flair, like zen plus tea plus rock and roll, if you will. Tea ceremony with a rock star you know and as an aside and for the record and because you probably maybe you're wondering brandon was uh it was an honor to meet him and he was could not have been more gracious or cool he was intelligent thoughtful and seriously passionate and knowledgeable about tea and incredibly generous as well he even gave tyler some of his artwork for his birthday,

which was pretty darn awesome of him. And if you want to get a solid glimpse of the real Brandon, I suggest you listen to his interview with Brett Easton Ellis on Brett's podcast. It was about, I don't know, maybe six weeks ago or something, but I'll put a link up in the show notes to that.

I highly suggest you listen to that interview. Brandon is a very thoughtful, cool guy. Anyway, it was an inspiring evening. And from the moment that I met Wuda, it was undeniable that this guy was the real deal Zen. It was the way he carried himself with humility and serenity, yet with this profound sense of self and this profound sense of purpose that left me with my own profound sense that this guy knows stuff that I don't.

This guy's got some crazy mad wisdom, and this is a guy that I could definitely learn things from. By way of background, he was born Aaron Fisher in the United States, but he was a guy who was drawn to the East from a very early age. And after studying philosophy in college, he traveled the world and ultimately settled down in Taiwan where he currently lives and where he has since become a Buddhist monk, steeped in the sutras and wisdom of that tradition, as well as a tea master. And that's a weird thing, like what is a tea master? And we get into that in the podcast, I won't spoil it, but he's a master of not just the living tradition of harvesting tea, but the living tradition of what tea means in a sort of meta

sense, like why it's important and why we should care about it. Tea is medicine, tea is healing, care about it. Tea is medicine. Tea is healing. Tea is life. Tea practice as Zen. The easiest way to put it is that he comes from this idea that tea is a universal living, breathing thing, the tree of life, you could call it, that unifies us all. And as a concept, it's something that works as a foundational idea, a metaphor, basis, if you will, for a set of ancient teachings, principles, knowledge, and wisdom to glean a broader truth about health, about healing, community, the environment, life, life's meaning, and the unifying oneness or undeniable interconnectedness of everything. In Taiwan, he founded and runs an organization called Global Tea Hut, which is a

school and a center that harvests tea. And it educates all comers on the tradition surrounding tea and welcomes people from all over the world to come and study and practice tea preparation and meditation and tea history, tea crafting, the sutras of tea and its relevance in society and how to cultivate this Tao of tea, if you will, as a method of spiritual cultivation. All right, that's a mouthful. I get it. I realize that this may be way off the reservation for some of you, and it was for me initially as well, but I implore you to please set aside whatever preconceived notions you may have and listen to this conversation with an open mind. Wuda spills over with crazy mad wisdom that more than merits your undivided attention and contemplation.

And I promise you that this just might be the best, most important, and most fascinating conversation that you're going to hear all week. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem, a problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at

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And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral

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And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful. And recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. The best place to kind of kick it off is I want to know, like, from your perspective, why this is important. Like, why should we be interested in tea? And what is it about it that is so alluring to you? And what can we learn from it?

you and what can we learn from it? There's the aspect of it that is, that is kind of there for anything, which is that it's, it's a, it's a about your love for it. And so it's, it's just, it's about my personal adoration for this this path of chata the way of tea and one of my favorite zen koans is i asked the radish farmer for directions and he pointed the way with radish why did he point away with the radish and like all koans it doesn't really have an answer but the most basic answer is he pointed the way with a radish because he's a radish farmer.

And so if you ask a man of tea for directions, you get directions through tea. But then there's another kind of deeper truth, which is why not cabbage soup? Why tea? Yeah, why tea? What is it about tea? What is it?

It's a very specific thing with a heritage and a culture and a teaching and a lifestyle and principles around it that you've oriented your life through and that you express through how you live. And the teachings that you share through these kinds of events, these tea ceremonies that we'll get into in a little bit. But if you could encapsulate what that means, is there a way to articulate that? Yeah, for sure. It's a dialogue about, I think, medicine and healing and what that means.

And, you know, as individuals, I think there's not any more pertinent topic than health. And because this is the most valuable thing in the world is life and especially human life. And by world, I mean this earth and this planet, you know, and what it means what it means to be alive i had the really the good fortune last year i went and served tea to some hopi elders and at the end they they the shaman gave me this gift and he said to me that it was

the greatest gift that he had to give that the hope he had to give and these these uh people they don't they don't use superlatives very often their language is taciturn and kind of really clear and integral and for him to use that great est that's a really strong word for him you know and what it turned out to be was they have five they have five uh types of corn you know colors red purple yellow white and what it turned out to be was white corn which to them is beginnings and i went and i held this thing this cobble corn it was a dried cobble corn and i realized you know that's what he had given me was life like infinite future life because this couple corn i could plant it and then i could grow corn and then i could grow more corn so this one cobble corn could feed a whole city of my people indefinitely into the future. And also past because the Hopi DNA was all like built up in it

as well. They had cared for this corn for so many thousands of years. And it, and it really, uh, highlighted and emphasized that aspect that, that is in, in Zen Buddhism, you know, it's one of the preliminaries to practice, which is the recognition that human life is so precious, so short, so precious. And for that reason, health, this dialogue about what health means, is so relevant to all of us. And then as a species, as a planet, it's so relevant because of the crisis that we're facing because of our, you know, our influence on this planet and on all the other species that live here. So health isn't just about us as individuals. It's about us as a species. And I think in the Western world, especially we have really confused notions about what health means and what that is about.

And that's in part because those who are responsible for educating us and taking care of our health are themselves confused. Because I think some of the discoveries, even in science, are fast and outstrip their knowledge. even in science, are fast and outstrip their knowledge. And while they know a lot, they also often neglect some of the fundamental questions. So what is health? Right, I mean, the scientific method really is premised on this idea of looking at things in a very micro context of isolating out variables and studying individual aspects of a thing but

it doesn't take or it it's not it doesn't lend itself to a macro kind of meta perspective on what's going on which is very different from the perspective that you're coming from which is a very global kind of you know let's take a step back and evaluate the whole. Yeah. Well, as individuals too. And in thinking about, you know, the story that you just shared about the Hopis in certain respects, it's almost like corn is their analog to your tea. You know, it is sort of this, the life force that sustained their culture and is very important to their

history and their legacy and what sustained them. And it's this cycle of connectedness to the earth and from, you know, from the planting to the harvesting, to the feeding, to the planting again, and that cycle of life that permeates the culture of tea. Yes. Yeah, very much so. Yeah. And you know, how many how many you know out of 10 people i think that if i grabbed on the street and asked them to define you know what does health mean to you um i think you get back really you know either no definition or confused definitions you know and i think if i asked the average health practitioner in america they're going to say

that health is the absence of disease but that's really foolish for two reasons one is you can't define a thing by what it's not so if you ask me you know if somebody asked me who is rich and i say well he's not george that doesn't tell them anything about rich and more fundamental problem with this definition is that um if your definition of health is freedom from illness, then no human being that has ever lived has ever been healthy. Because there's not a single, that's the, we're defining health in, in supernatural terms. Then we're defining health in, in a way that is unachievable for us. What's the point in that? What's the point in, in defining optimized human life in terms that a human cannot achieve? so then how do you define it how do

i define it that's that's that's where we get back to t and that's you know i'd rather not and i'd rather define medicine because i think if you understand medicine then you understand health right because medicine is what brings about the balance and and and achieves health so my definition of medicine is anything which puts you in harmony with spirit and all life on earth. And so medicine to me and health to me are about that harmony. And that can transcend sickness or death. So a real example that I like to use is let's say

your grandfather has cancer and he's got stage 4 and he goes into the hospital and he gets the round of chemo and the cancer goes into remission and the doctors are like you're lucky. Very few people at this

stage go into remission. We've done what we can. It's time for him to go home. And he goes home, but the lights are not on in his eyes. He's depressed. He's in bed all day. There's no energy. There's none of what defines the soul and character of the person

you call grandfather. And so you take him back to the doctor and they're like, you know, we can't help you. He should be so lucky as to have cancer in remission. And then your friend introduces you to a Native American shaman. I'm just going to continue that analogy since we were talking about Hopi earlier. And you're at that point where you're ready to try something.

So you invite that shaman over, and he goes into the room with your grandfather at dawn, and they come out midday, and your grandfather comes out with him, and the lights are back on, the eyes are there, the life is there. And he goes and takes your grandmother and walks with her on the beach and says what he has to say

and comes back and, like, organizes a family feast and sends you down to the basement to get that bottle of wine he's been saving and then, like, you know, grabs you in the hallway on the way to the bathroom and by the shoulders and looks you in the eyes and says thank you i love you and uh dances with your grandmother to their old records and then it just so happens that two days later your grandfather dies now you know according to the mainstream definition or the definition that I used earlier as health in opposition to sickness and death, that ritual not only failed to heal him, it potentially killed him. But it's not, it doesn't take much, a few drops of common sense and you can realize that your grandfather was healed.

So it's a qualitative approach as opposed to quantitative. Well, and the key thing is that you're addressing the spiritual element, which is a whole other energy that's being integrated into the definition of health. being integrated into the definition of health. And so how does the culture of tea, how does that play into this perspective? So this harmony puts you in harmony with spirit and with all life on earth, or puts you in harmony with Tao and all life on earth,

whatever words you want to use you know it's not so important so one of t's most ancient names is the great connector and to me connection is just a synonym for harmony and there are um myriad ways in which t connects us but i like to focus on three um we can talk about them individually and you guys can share some insights maybe. The first to me is connection to nature. And this one's the trickiest one because it implies a disconnection and there never was a disconnection. We are not disconnected from nature and therefore cannot be connected. A lot of times I do workshops around the world and I start them with a question, which is a trick question. I ask people, I want you to get up and I want you to touch the nearest earth. And people get up and they like touch plants and

they touch the ground. And I tell them that this workshop is about reestablishing the feeling that will allow you when someone asks you to touch the nearest earth to touch your own face, because I'm earth. And so what has been lost is not the connection to nature. What has been lost is the feeling of connection to nature. They're different. Yeah, conscious awareness of that. Exactly.

And that's because our ancestors, they grew all their own food. And so their food came from plants and their houses were made of plants and their clothes were made of plants. And in those days, no hospital. So when you're sick, you've got two choices, magic or plants. And so their, their dependence on nature was tacit and it was there in every day. And, um, we now live in mind made cities and take chemical medicine and process food and synthetic clothes, et cetera, et cetera. And so the feeling of connection to nature is not there

and what tea does is you know when you're drinking tea that tacitness returns that feeling of connection returns because in this in this liquor in this brew is uh is earth and minerals and and water and mountain you're drinking the weather the tea from season to season is completely different so you're literally drinking the weather and you know the thing these trees aren't just connected to what's to the earth to what's down there they're also connected to what's out there because they're pulling in sunshine and moonshine and starshine and through photosynthesis converting that into energies that we can synthesize so through them we communicate to the sun and this is a this is a very real connection and we can connect in this way and so connect doesn't really mean disconnect and reconnect we are nature so you can hear the

feeling we've lost the feeling of connection to nature by even the way that ordinary people talk when they say like i have to get out into nature as in leave the city in order to feel what they're saying essentially in this in this the structure of this conversation what they're really saying is i need to leave the city in order to feel connected to nature right but in the city you are in nature you never were disconnected right what is it qualitatively about tea i mean i suppose you can make the same argument that if you eat a kale leaf or you eat anything that comes out of the ground that you're taking in the weather and the sun and the photosynthesis and all of these same things but there's something different about qualitatively distinct about tea yeah and tea

helps you feel all those other things too you know that's that's because that's that's the that's the real love that's the real that's it you know so what it is about tea there's a digestible and an indigestible version of this the digestible version is that this plant grows it up very high in the mountains and it has one of the most complicated root structures of any tree you know there are others with equally complicated but it has deep deep deep roots a five foot tea tree has 30 foot of roots ancient tea trees have more than 100 meters in fact if you cut all the roots including the branch roots it would extend thousands of kilometers it's deep root structure so the digestible version is because it grows up in the mountains, because it has such steep roots, it has access to trace elements that we can't get elsewhere.

And I learned so much about all of this when you visited us, I guess it was last year, it was a while ago, right? How long ago was that? Six months ago or something. And for the, but for the listener who might be brand new to this concept, and to be clear, we're not talking about the Lipton tea bags that you buy in the store. We're talking about something vastly different in terms of tea, ancient tea and tea culture. And as a tea master, you're tending to these tea trees that have existed for hundreds of years, right? There's a sort of mastery over taking care of these plants and what they're producing and the quality of the tea that comes out of that

and how it's stored and aged and the certain properties that are particular to this tree versus that tree or this mountain or this altitude. Is that fair? I don't want to mischaracterize yeah i mean that's that that's kind of opening a whole another thing that i think we can talk about in a little bit it's because you're talking about tea versus versus the sort of factory yeah i mean there's there's definitely the the quality of the herbs uh is definitely apparent in the healing properties.

I mean, you know, the production and the way that the herbs are made and where they come from and what kind of trees is relevant. But to finish what I was, I want to finish what I was saying and then we can come back to that topic because it's a big one and it's something that I think we should discuss because it's really important. I gave you the digestible version. I'd also like to give

any less the indigestible one i want to go a little deeper no that's a really important topic it's awesome and really um it will get to it um the indigestible version though is that this plant is is an avatar of love it's a it's a manifestation of mother earth's love for us an avatar of love it's a it's a manifestation of mother earth's love for us and you know how how else would she show her love for us then to create the medicine that we need that's how she speaks she speaks in in life she speaks in dna she speaks in the creation of plants and so what i'm saying is that most plants have their own business they scientifically they evolved to fill a niche in a local ecology this plant arose to be human that's it it was the plant kingdom seeing us and of course you know there's not a species on this planet that doesn't know we're here we're incredibly noisy and and the first most consumed

substance on this planet is is water and the second is tea and there's probably maybe nothing in this earth going back in history that has had so much human consciousness devoted to it this practice goes back 15 000 years it's older than the pyramids and nations and nations and economies have been the entire global economy was built on it. The empire, the Chinese empire. There's an old saying, which is that tea doesn't belong to China. China belongs to tea. And the entire British empire was built on it. America was founded by America's independence was founded by throwing it in the ocean. A resistance to this.

Yeah. So, I mean, it definitely is involved in all of that. To address your other question, definitely there are differences in the quality of the herbs and their their efficacious their efficacy you know based on how they're what trees they come from and how they're produced um in our tradition we talk about kind of two kinds of tea and then we subdivide one and uh the the best kind of tea we call living tea and um that's a translation of some chinese words that when literally translated mean real tea which doesn't sound so nice in in english and also

it's confusing because real as opposed to what fake tea yeah and so we translate that living tea and living tea is about um first of all seed seed propagated. There's kind of four qualities to it. Seed propagated. Tea's a sexual plant, and every seed is unique. And there's a lot of power in the seeds. And unfortunately, very few teas in the world are seed propagated these days. How is tea generally grown? Cuttings.

So branches are cut off of a tree. You take a sapling and plant it. Yeah, you plant it and it's done for industrial reasons uniformity of flavor and also a thousand different trees is like a thousand different kids that all have different needs and it's a lot more work for the farmer so um so that's not done very much but you know as you mentioned seed propagated tea trees there's two kinds of tea trees big big leaf and small leaf. Big leaf is the original tea tree. It has roots that grow straight down and a single trunk.

Those can live thousands of years when they're seed propagated. And then as tea evolved northwards, it turned more into like a bush with several trunks and roots that still go down, but they go kind of outward as they go down and they don't go as deep. And those can live hundreds of years. But the cuttings can can live hundreds of years but the the cuttings can only live maximum 100 years the average is 15 to 20 because they usually kill them when they when they decrease in output at all so there's a great more vibrancy and seed propagated tea trees so that's kind of the first quality the second is uh of living tea is room to

grow so living things in order to be healthy need room to grow. And that means kind of like horizontal or lateral room to grow. In other words, room between tea trees. They know how to organize themselves. To use language loosely, it's not about knowing, but not in the way that we use that word when we're talking about human knowing. But in the sense that there's a lot of abandoned tea gardens, for example, in Taiwan that the Japanese planted when they controlled Taiwan. And then they were kicked out. And those gardens went abandoned for 80 years.

When you come back, the tea trees aren't in rows anymore. Because they know, quote unquote, I mean, we don't have a word for this, but they know that the soil over here is more nutrient dense and that there can be a greater cluster. And then over here, it's not so much and they need to be more spread out. And this happens because in the place where it's less nutrient dense, they die. And only a few remain. So room to grow in that way and also room to grow, I guess, vertically, which means every plant on earth has a ratio between its crown and its roots. It's an unknown ratio, but it's there in the sense that when you prune the crown, the roots also shrink to adjust. I didn't know that.

Yes. So, and it's not measurable because it's unique for every plant, but you could say that the fact is when you prune a tree, its roots also shrink. Right? Is that true of all plants or is that something as far as i understand that's what that's what two professors of of plant biology have have told me it's definitely true of tree of tea and uh so what happens when they prune them is that the roots shrink um and uh so then they do that again for industrial reasons for easier picking so there's just room to grow in general is the general principle.

The third one is, the third is biodiversity. Biodiversity is so infinite and impossible to understand. We have this beautiful man who's now passed away named Fukuoka in Japan. And he did a lot for the culture and agriculture of Asia. And he has a quote that I like a lot. He studied biology in university. And he used to say often, I had a professor who often would say that religion and philosophy have no place in the world of science. And one day, some 20 years later, I was walking in a field of barley and I realized science has no place in the world of barley. And he was speaking to the fact that controlling some few amount of factors

doesn't recognize the infinite connections. There's a beautiful video on the internet on YouTube and a beautiful group of studies out of which that small video came, recognizing the effects that the reintroduction of wolves had on Yellowstone Park in 19, in 1995, there was a reintroduction of a small group of wolves. Oh, and how the, the, the,

it started to reforest, right? It changed everything. The video is called the video. I sent Mathis. I know exactly what you're talking about. The wolves changed the rivers. Yeah.

The rivers. That's right. Yeah. So essentially there was too many deers and they were grazing everywhere. And not only did this group of wolves start eating the deers, but the deers started changing their own migratory habits and started avoiding certain areas of the park completely because those were areas where it was easy for wolves to catch them. In other words, valleys and gorges, they started avoiding those places because they're dangerous,

which means that in like only five years, the size of the trees and plants in those areas quintupled. And as the trees grew up, birds came. As the birds came, you know, as the birds came, then other animals came. And then, you know, it's just this da-da-da-da-da-da-da, and you get to the point where it's like then the rodents start coming back. And as the rodents come back, the hawks come back. As the hawks come back, the eagles come back.

As the forest grows, the rivers maintain their banks more and they stop pooling. So just this introduction of these few amount of wolves not only changes the entire ecosystem, every single living thing, brings beavers to the river and they're also ecosystem changers, but it also changes the geography of the land.

Right? Mm-hmm. And so in completely unpredictable ways. In completely unpredictable ways. We can't control that. So biodiversity is necessary. In what way does the snake affect the tea tree and the bumblebees and the infinite microscopic organisms in the soil? The only way to answer that is to say in what way. It's the wrong question because the question is in what that is to say in in what way it's the

wrong question because the question is in what way does it not in what way does it not yeah exactly none you know almost so biodiversity is the is the third one and the last one is then in chinese the character for tea is composed of chinese words are composed of parts that are called radicals so the top radical is the radical for herb and the bottom radical is the one for wood. And then right there in the center is man. So as I told you already, the indigestible version is that this is an avatar of love. It's love. And it's a conversation between man and nature, tea is. And so where is man bringing that conversation?

In living tea, it's about connection to nature, and that's that first big connection that we're talking about, that all this talk has kind of nested in that I started with, and that's about recognizing. When I ask you, do you love your children? You say, of course. Well, your daughter's body is 75% water. How do you love your daughter without loving water?

Right? There's an old Sufi saying like that, which is kind of like, let us not call the love of a mother for her children love. Let us call that biology. Because even raccoons do that love is when love is when all the little ones are your children and all the adults are your brothers and sisters or your mothers and fathers or your grandmothers and grandfathers that's love that's what jesus was talking about that's what the buddha was talking about that's love that's when you see that your your daughter's body is water and what water she consumes is her

is her you see she is the water she's in the clouds because what's in the clouds today is in her tomorrow and i mean that not metaphysically, but physically. Right, literally. Literally. Quite literally. Quite literally. And so when we're connected to nature,

that love, that's what that feels like. That feeling, when that feeling returns, that's what it feels like, you know. And so this is what we call living tea, all of these things. When that conversation is right between man, so you got seed propagated, you know, room to grow, biodiversity, and that right conversation. But this living tea has a problem.

Huge problem. It sounds awesome, every detail. But there's a big problem with it, which is that there's not enough. If all the tea in the world was produced in that way, millions of people would not have tea. I don't want that. So we have to compromise. This is 2014. If you didn't want to compromise, you wouldn't have incarnated in this time.

This is time for working with compromises. You know, I want everyone to have tea. So on that, we can call that another word for that. We can say that's a garden tea. And then on the other hand, there's plantation tea. And the aim of plantation tea is to increase yield. That's what the compromises are about. They're about increasing yield to provide tea for larger amounts of people.

So how do we responsibly make those compromises? You know, seed propagated. It can't always be. As I said, if your aim is to increase yield, a thousand trees and they're all unique is too much work for farmers to handle. Second, you know, room to grow. Obviously, we have to compromise on that because we need more tea trees on that land in order to meet the needs of this compromise, which is a higher yield. And third, you know, the biodiversity, we have to decrease that too because the tea is already competing against itself and it can't compete against too many other organisms. We have to increase that.

But for me, that's where the compromise ends. Because when you start compromising that fourth one, which is the dialogue, when the person starts to maintain an attitude of greed and of taking from nature rather than approaching with gratitude uh then income the agrochemicals you know it's a way of of that of how that that happened the energetic result of that conversation going off is that you know income the weed killers and the pesticides and the and the chemical fertilizers and they betray the whole reason for why i'm willing to compromise in the first place, because as I said, I want to compromise so that everyone can have tea and those chemicals make the tea unsustainable, which means they provide a higher yield of tea in space,

but they don't provide a higher yield of tea in time. So a hundred years from now, those farms go fallow and the tea lovers of 100 years from now don't have any tea. And so when I said I'm willing to compromise so that everyone can have tea, I include future generations. I want your granddaughter to be able to drink tea and her daughter to be able to drink tea. So we need some plantation tea, but it needs to be grown responsibly, ethically. It needs to be grown in a way that doesn't harm people and the environment. We need to start recognizing that.

And we need to shift all these things. And this is where tea makes a big impact in the world. Because it's the second most consumed substance on earth. If it goes green, that can be an influence and an example to all kinds of agriculture. And this is what needs to happen. Because as a species, there's no magic pill. There's no technological invention that can save us. It's very, very simple. A very simple thing is this, enough of us, and I don't know what enough means, 51%,

60%, 80%, 100%, I don't know. But enough of us have to start to want different things. I don't know, but enough of us have to start to want different things. We have to want different things. And when we want different things, our value systems shift. Well, a couple observations on that. I mean, I think that, that people feel disempowered, they feel powerless. And so whether or not they want different things, they feel like they don't have the opportunity to, um to make that demand. You know, there is an emasculation.

And I think it is important. It's mediums like this where I think we can start to convey the idea of giving the power back and the idea that you can vote with your dollar and the idea that there are ways to organize and make yourself heard. And you know, you don't have to be kind of a victim to these energies and forces. And when I mean that, I mean, economic forces or governmental forces or commercial forces or what have you that in so many ways kind of dictate the structure of our lives. And, you know, just in listening to you, which that was beautiful. Thank you, by the way, in talking about tea, it goes back to the entire purpose of it, which is to a, at least as I understand it, based on what you've,

how you've been explaining it is to not connect us to nature because we're already connected to nature, but to open our consciousness to that connection, to deepen the awareness of our connection to the earth and to everything that's around us. And in so doing that, connect us to our fellow man. It's the exchange of the ceremony, the sitting down and having the tea together that creates a deeper bond. There is the social aspect of it. And when you start talking about these compromises on this sliding scale, where it begins with sort of wanting to have this available for more people, which is a good idea, but as you sort of slide down the hill getting into the fertilizers and all of that,

But as you sort of slide down the hill getting into the fertilizers and all of that, it defeats the entire purpose for which it was originally conceived. You're undermining the entire point of the endeavor to begin with. Exactly. Yeah, so for us, we kind of stick to living tea and or organic plantation tea. And this is kind of where we're at as far as the efficacy of the herbs and you also touched right there on you know the kind of meta topics we're talking about which is i said that you know medicine is is is harmony with spirit and all life on earth and then i said that connection to me is a synonym for harmony and i said that tea connects in three ways and the first

is nature and we talked about that for a long time and the other two you just struck upon on your own you know which is connection to self and connection to others and those are equally important you know in this world uh right now there's so much distractions on the outside and so much of our energy is pulled outward and not enough balance of looking within, which is where our answers really are, where we're meant to live from. And people come often and ask for the answers about how to live, and the ultimate answer, that is the ultimate answer, is know thyself.

You have to do that. You're, you know, I have never riched in my life. You know, I've never done that. I don't have any experience. And meanwhile, you know, you're the world's leading expert on richology. And you've got the answer. You've got the answers. So, you know, tea, and obviously, I mean, think about it.

Tea obviously, so obviously, so apparently is a path from the outside to the inside. It so obviously leads inward. You pick up a bowl of tea with two hands. You start to drink it and you're now focused on aromas and flavors in your mouth. And then it goes down and you're focused on psychosomatic changes in your body. And then, you know, and then now you you're inward you're into a meditative state there's an old saying in in in chinese which is cha chan yi wei which is essentially tea and meditation are one flavor um so tea and meditation are the same um you know i've been practicing meditation for

decades and teaching it for 15 years. And if somebody stopped me on the street and said, define the meditative mind in as few words as possible, what is the meditative mind? What does that mean? I would say calm and awake. That's the meditative mind, calm and awake. And how does tea make you feel? Calm and awake. And so there's a very real way in which tea connects us to ourself. And then you touched on, you know, my personal favorite of the three, which is connection to others. And about that just, you know, sharing the most simple gifts. You go into homes all over this world and you get free tea.

Tea is about hospitality. It's about connection to others. It's about offering something without nothing in return, without wanting anything. It's about looking somebody in the eyes and saying, I see you. I care about you. Even if it's just a chat, let's be together, really be together. I'm frightened when I see young people out on their on their first

second date and you can tell the romance is young and you watch them and for 30 minutes they don't look at each other they just look at their cell phones you know and there's not a connection anymore and these devices that and the increased invention of social media devices are supposed to bring us greater connection, but they seem to also isolate in a certain way. And it's not the technology. I'm not an anti-technology tirade. It's our relationship to the technology. It is. Every machine you own, every single one comes pre-installed for your convenience with an on-off switch.

They all come that way for your convenience. We never shut it off. Well, they're very addictive. Well, T can remind you. T can remind you. I have a lot of students who have families, and the families are all moving in different directions. And because of these devices you know connection sometimes difficult it's not like you know when i grew up there was only one rule in my house that was like iron there was of course a lot of rules but the one rule that was

iron was that dinner was at six o'clock and there was no getting out of that you could trust me i tried calling and saying, you know, there's a football game and it's going, it was just like, the answer was dinners at six click. You know, you had to be there. That was the time to be together with the family. And so a lot of that's gone and that's just a part of the world. And it's no point in like going back or saying those were the days. Um, but you know, the T space is a space where we can, we can shut some of that off and we can be together and people, tons of people that I know, hundreds have found that it really works, that it really works. It, um, because it relaxes us,

it calms us. It helps us set down some of our masks and it helps us to make a heart space. It helps us to make a space where we can communicate with each other from the heart. And it creates a time, once a week, whatever, a reminder, a place where we can shut some stuff off and we can hang out with each other and look at each other and be together. Because what a shame if my dear brother Rich, he's my best friend, and we're both so busy, and then finally after two weeks we get 40 minutes to go for a walk in the park together and you spend 20 of those minutes talking to someone else who isn't here texting on the phone or something like yeah so you know

maybe the walk in the park just doesn't work as well as tea tea's a social lubricant civilization on this planet was built on it you know the british understood that too that tea isn't just a beverage it isn't just a herbal medicine or a plant or a spiritual path it's also a time he's a time for them it was four o'clock but whatever it was it's a time in which you set down the world you set down the world this is a concept that as Asian civilization understood very clearly and that has been lost even there and maybe never understood here, which was the idea that in their language, the idea that you could temporarily ordain as a monk or nun. So that could come in the form of a young man going for a year into the monastery and then leaving. It also came in another form,

which was like a businessman building a Zen garden in his backyard. And in that garden was a hut. And once a week when he's free on a Saturday or whatever it was, he goes into that thatched grass hut. And for those two hours, he's a hermit up in the mountains and he releases all worldly attachments for those two hours, he's a hermit up in the mountains. And he releases all worldly attachments for those two hours. And then obviously comes out of there so much more equipped to deal with his daily life and all of his situations and all the vicissitudes of life. And so tea is very much that space it was also a space of social equality

long long long before social equality was even twinkling in the eyes of any society on earth you know one of the the first actually the first writing that we have or the oldest writing i should say the oldest writing that's still still extant you know the whether it actually is the first or not who knows but the oldest one we have is is a book by luyu the classics of tea and in there he says in the morning when i take my tea that's the only time of day that i can rest assured that at that moment i'm doing the exact same thing as the august emperor himself that's that's really cool that's interesting and in japan which was such a

stratified society the tea space was the only place where people of different class could hang out together so it was culturally acceptable to share tea with somebody from a different cast yeah and you know there's ways in built into all the tea ceremonies that uh that emphasize this point of temporary ordination you want to hear hear my all-time favorite tea story? Yes. Because it highlights this truth. Yeah, for sure. So the most famous and important Japanese tea master

was a Zen and tea master named Rikyo. And Rikyo was the greatest tea master tea master in the in the country he was actually tea teacher to the shogun and so he held a position of very high esteem he was nobility and we don't know why but for whatever reason he took an interest in the man the fisherman who delivered fish to his house because in those days uh in a big noble house like his which is actually more of like a compound everything was delivered to to wealthy people to nobility and it was of course delivered through some back entrance and that was a task that was handled by like servants and and i'm you know unfortunately, from our perspective, females, I mean, that was just the way things were stratified in that society.

And it was actually in sometimes in some certain eras in Japan, it was legal for a samurai to kill peasants, you know, just wantonly. So there was a very great degree of class separation. So to the point that like, you know, and this was there in China too, and probably in parts of Europe at certain parts in history too, that the, you know, when nobility came down the road, everybody just kind of looked at the ground. And there wasn't really a way for the two to talk to each other. So it was very amazing that Riki would take an interest in the fishermen that delivered fish to his house.

And you can imagine how embarrassed the fishermen would have been at first, not having the language or, you know, way of communicating to this great Lord. Well, probably also terrified that anybody found out. And get his head chopped. Terrified, terrified. But for whatever reason this went on and after enough years the the fisherman grew comfortable and to the point where he you know rikio could ask him about his wife about his kids about the fish today and he

didn't look at the ground anymore he would chat back to him at least there in the kitchen off the road you know they they became friends and uh over the course of a few weeks then rikio noticed that something was bothering the fisherman something on his mind what's going on you know finally said to him you know what is it you can tell me we're friends what's going on and you can imagine the fisherman in a nervous way maybe you know playing with his clothes or something looking down well well well come on you can tell me spit it out the fisherman says well for actually more than two years now i've wanted to invite you to my house for tea and been too embarrassed to do so, but you've been so kind to me. I really would like to offer you my hospitality.

And Rikyo said, of course, and they set a date. On that day, Rikyo took one of his senior students with him, and they went to this fisherman's hut, they drank tea and then they were given a meal and then they left and as they were walking back Rikyo said to his senior student that was one of the most transcendent tea sessions of my entire life and they walked on in silence a little bit more the students was very puzzled by this because every day ricky was busy scolding him about how he makes tea and so finally he couldn't take it anymore and he said master that fisherman did everything wrong he he bumbled all all the steps he almost dropped the tea bowl two times. And the tea itself was bitter and kind of overbrewed and awful and not whisked properly because it was powder tea.

And Rikyo stopped and looked at him in the eyes and said, that man didn't invite us to his home in order to demonstrate his tea brewing skills. And this is the essence of it. It was the invitation into his home. Into his heart. Because this great master said this was one of the most transcendent tea sessions of his entire life.

And people, the question, the number one question around the world, master said this was one of the most transcendent tea sessions of his entire life and uh people the question the number one question around the world i travel and i give uh teachings and and share tea ceremonies and in in you know so many so many places and at public events the the most common question is what's your favorite tea and my answer is always and it's still the answer it's not a witticism it's the true answer the answer is tea prepared with love and so you know some of the best tea sessions in my life weren't with you know great masters who understood tea i drank tea once with this monk up in the mountains in japan and we shared one cracked bowl and he brewed the tea in a Hello

Kitty teapot and it was very simple tea it was clean and organic but it was very simple and he didn't understand anything about it about where it came from or how it was made or how to even brew it but he loved me and he was trying to connect to me because I didn't speak his language and he didn't speak mine. And so he was trying to connect to me. And that was very apparent. And this is another way in which this medicine is so profound. And why to me, it is such a vehicle for us to connect to each other. Because, you know, I'm a Zen monk, so there's that aspect of me. That's my personal spiritual practice.

But the thing about any spiritual tradition or spiritual understanding or work is that all of the traditions in the world, they were oracled by people. is that all of the traditions in the world, they were oracled by people. And having been oracled by people, they are culturally and linguistically and temporally specific. Which means that when you translate the teachings of the Buddha from 2,500 years ago to now, or from Magadi, the language he spoke, to English, some things lost. And also, being conveyed in language means also concepts,

which means you can agree or disagree With the teachings of the Buddha You can believe in the teachings of the Buddha or not Or the teachings of Jesus or whomever But these sutras are written By nature and they're written in the leaves Of a plant And they are inconceptual

And non-verbal So that you can say I don't want this bowl of tea, but it's fundamentally absurd for you to say, I don't agree with it. You can't say, I don't believe in this bowl of tea. How can you do that? You know, and you can't, this is, I guess what I'm saying is that if you put a Buddhist, a Christian, a Hindu and a Muslim in a room and they talk about their worldviews, they'll

argue. If they go in that same room and drink tea and talk only about tea, they come out brothers, they come out hugging, and I've seen it. I've seen it because we have a tea center with hundreds of visitors from around the world and of all denominations. And to give you one cute story, we had an Iranian visitor that's come a few times

and he's a Sufi, and he'll drink tea, he, he'll drink tea in the center. And then when teachings happen in the center, he often like puts his hand very earnestly on the table and looks around at my students and, and he'll say, you know, with great verve, you know, what he's teaching is Sufi, right? And, and I, I have some family who are Christian and when I visit them they feel the same way. They say this liquid this plant, this practice, this ceremony suits their

vision of the world too. And I think that's powerful. Really powerful. It belongs to everyone. Yes. yes so there this fundamental core thread of connection that is the foundation of tea sort of manifests itself in many many ways So there becomes an oral tradition and there becomes these kind of cultural imperatives or like social rules that crop up around it. And you see it in kind of the legacy of in the British empire, for example, like four o'clock is tea or high tea or whatever. I would assume without knowing the history that that is, you know, the sort of legacy of an Asian culture's influence upon that through trade, correct?

I mean, doesn't that come from the traditions that you have, you know, invested your life in? on that. And then they create all this kind of social etiquette around it that reinforces in some ways, I suppose, the culture, but also kind of distracts you from what's really important. And for me, I had never experienced this culture before I've had, when I did tea ceremony with Colin, when he had temple tea, that was the first time that I'd ever done that. I was like, I don't know, a year and a half ago or two years ago. And I didn't know what to expect. And I'm used to, you know, I'm programmed in the Western world. You want a tea, you want a coffee, you go to Starbucks, you get it really quick. You run out, you get in your car and that's the end of the story. So this idea of ceremony and sitting and being silent with a small intimate group of people over a period of a number

of hours where we partake communally but quietly silently through this process was an extraordinary experience in connection because at the end of that experience i felt connected to people that i just met at the beginning and really hadn't exchanged any you know any words with there was no verbal exchange but there was like an intimate bond and you were talking about how this the stripping away of the masks and and kind of getting real and getting present into the now and and being connected to getting real and getting present into the now and, and being connected to through the tea, through that connection, that conscious connection with nature to the fellow man, which is a beautiful thing. And I think as a result of then doing a couple ceremonies since then and doing it, when you came to our house, really trying to develop a greater understanding

of how powerful that is. And it's interesting when you talk about the story that you tell of, you know, the tea ceremony in the hut where, you know, he, he almost dropped the bowl and the tea was bitter and all that sort of thing, not being important and getting back to what's really important. And it's almost, I was, when you were, when you were talking about that, I was thinking about, there's an analogy with yoga. It's sort of like going to yoga and being super caught up and doing the pose perfectly right. And where's your heel, but not understanding the, the sort of global purpose of why you're doing it to begin with. And in the, and the balance between those two, you know, because you have to remember that Rikyo,

the very next day, is going to wake up and start disciplining those students again for not doing it right. Yeah. That's funny. So, you know, it's the recognition that kind of there is the form and there's the freedom in the form

and the love that's behind the form. And, you you know a lot of the ceremonies are being rewritten in as they always have been you know you spoke about these things coming from asia but they're deeper than that you know they're deeper than the zen tradition or the daoist tradition and this stuff extends way back it's as i, 10,000, 15,000 years. Back to like shaman days. Back to tribal stuff. You know, back way beyond where we can even reach. So it's deep. And it has evolved in so many ways.

And obviously been influenced by all the traditions and cultures that have carried it. In so many ways. So there is just a magic in this plant that is all that energy and all that devotion and all that practice and all that love and all that, you know, and all the worldly stuff too. BST has so thoroughly entered the world. I mean, it's a beverage as well. It's a hobby. It's so many things.

And it is all those things. For me, primarily, it's a spiritual practice. It's a Tao. But, you know, my teacher always discusses it in a way that it's like a pyramid and at the bottom you have beverage, then above that hobby, then above that art,

and then finally Tao. And then he always quite cutely says that it's a lonely place at the top, but at least we have the best teas to keep us company. So I mean, discussing the tea ceremony, Wuda, then, I mean, you have a very specific protocol that you follow in ceremony. And I know then, I mean, you have a very specific, uh, protocol that you follow in ceremony. And I know that, um, I mean, we're talking about the universality of the teas and

that it's for everybody and that it doesn't really matter what, you know, what the teas are, but, and that's beautiful, but I can say that, um, it is sitting first with Colin and Colin's a dear friend of all of ours and a student of yours. And we first experienced tea ceremony with Colin, and Colin's a dear friend of all of ours and a student of yours, and we first experienced tea ceremony with Colin. And I saw, I experienced firsthand the deep transformation that happens as a result of sitting at the table as all the different steps are gone through. And I'll let you explain that and share that with us in a minute. But what I did want to share is that depending on the tea that we're drinking, the energy in the room, probably whoever's performing the tea ceremony, there were very expansive experiences and also very different qualities in those experiences. And I even had the beautiful experience of taking our homeschool to experience a tea ceremony with Colin.

And we had children ages 4 to 13 who actually came in. One was not so receptive and kind of challenged Colin with some pretty hardcore questions. Like, I think he was like, what is the meaning of tea and why should I care? That was kind of the opening. That's the question. That was the question, right? That's an awesome question. Right. But that was so amazing was we, here we were sitting around the table, you know, three moms, seven kids, a rescue puppy. And Colin was really in the moment and in his Zen because he just kept responding, you know, purely in the moment. And in the beginning, the kids grabbed the bowls and they turned their nose

up at, you know, what is this with no milk or sugar or sweetener in it. And as the conversation continued, they started to grab the bowls and then they were, they were smelling and they were drinking. And we experienced a full tea ceremony with that group of children, which was quite extraordinary. And we brought that tradition back into our homeschool and we drank tea every time we gathered together. But what I'd like you to ask you to please share with the listeners is this is a very different process than going to the market and getting a Lipton teabag or even an organic teabag and putting it in a cup. There is something deeper and I do really feel a meditation that can really expand our awareness of who we are at a at a more expanded place yeah I mean that's I mean part of the

the you know the form is what separates ceremony from beverage and surrounds the tea space with a kind of maybe a sacred intention. And that can be applied to anything, you know. The Zen understanding is that how you do anything is how you do everything and that actually maybe even statistically at the end of your term on this planet you will have spent more time putting on and taking off shoes than you will have spent doing that whatever that x is that you think defines you and so how you put on your shoes also matters. And so there's that aspect of elevating the ordinary, because after breathing, second most ordinary is drinking. So elevating the ordinary to sacred. And that's one of the, for me,

the things that I love about Zen the most is that it's not, it's recognizing that there's no distinction between sacred and profane and that that everything is is done with that with with sacred intention and everything is then and that's inherent in any spiritual perspective i mean a path of faith should be also that the goal is to make everything a prayer to god that everything is done in a way that you give yourself to God. So that kind of intention of being mindful and surrounding the tea with that is very important. There's even an ancient saying that was there,

even amongst casualty sessions between businessmen or whomever, that it was impolite to talk as you were brewing the tea. And then that's taken to an even greater extreme in many of the Zen monasteries where they say that if you're not mindful, then it isn't tea that we're drinking, but, but rather your afflictions and delusions. And isn't there that there's that kind of Zen story speaking to this idea of the sacred and everything, and including like the inanimate object, like, isn't there that Zen story of the guy who comes back angry and throws his keys down or whatever? Yeah. The Sufi. Oh, is that a Sufi story?

Yeah, so it's like you're projecting. That inanimate object was important enough for you to project your anger onto it. So you should respect it and shift your energy or your relationship to that inanimate thing. It's not an inanimate thing. Of course not. And carrying that mindfulness into your entire environment. Yeah. And in that kind of line of thinking,

why are all the negative emotions socially acceptable and the positive ones are not? So if you're walking down the road and you see a guy shouting at his cell phone and saying, you jerk, or whatever, and you don't think twice, but if he's hugging and kissing it, you think he's mad.

So why is that? Why are, why are, why is it, why is it socially acceptable for me to abuse all the so-called inanimate objects around me? And it's socially unacceptable for me to praise them or feel respect towards them.

Caress your iPhone. Yeah. I don't have any only when no one's looking you know um so you know there is a form and uh it's important um you know that's a that's an aspect i think a form to to provide room for the meaning like not form as an end in and of itself but form to create to create parameters around which you can allow this like the true meaning of sure procedure to emerge sure well i mean that you know do you want flashy contentless pop music or do you want to listen to maybe do you or do you want to listen to do you want to listen to something with some soul? Yeah.

Just recently they published the videos of the sessions that Stevie Ray Vaughan had with Albert King. And they're really beautiful to see the video. I had listened to the album, but to see the video and something Albert says to Stevie, he says all these young guys out here playing guitar, they play fast and they play hard and they don't concentrate on soul at all. I thought that, and that was like 1983.

Perfect technique without the heart. Without the soul. So what is any of the form without the soul? But there's also a really, what I would say limiting habit in the western world um which is to seek the freedom right away without the form like just grasp immediately for freedom without the form and that just brings chaos so you know you have a five-year-old and she's dancing to the music and she's free she's completely free her movements are free there's no-old and she's dancing to the music and she's free.

She's completely free. Her movements are free. There's no hang up there. She's with the music. And then you have a 40-year-old dance master and she's completely free too. There's no limitations. You know, they asked one of the best ballerinas in the world, how do you perform so beautifully?

And she said, on the stage, there's no music and there's no me there's only dance she's completely free she's not telling her body what to do we know this when athletes are in the zone when you ask them how'd you do that they don't know that it may best one present in the moment and channeling like a higher consciousness sure yourself you if they're good they point to I mean, they don't know how they did that. Because the fact is, I mean, bookies make money from this. If the quarterback has something on his mind, he doesn't play well that day. You know, there's no time when Nadal's hitting a tennis ball at you

hundreds of miles an hour to, like, say, okay, I better move to the right. Good, good, turn my hand. I mean, that's, boom, point Nadal. You know, there's no time. There's no space within which to move. And same with the dancing. She's free.

That master is free. So what's the difference between the master and the child? The master understands the rules but has mastery over the rules but knows when to let them go, to be free within the construct, within the form. There you go. You got it right there.

That was the absolute essence of it. The freedom in the form. She has found the freedom within the form. There you go. You got it right there. That was the absolute essence of it. The freedom in the form. She has found the freedom in the form. The difference is she has decades of practice, of technique. And that technique came from where? It came from lineage. It came from lineage. Everything we have is a product of lineage.

Our DNA, this language that we're using to communicate is thousands of years in the making. All this technology we're using to record this is thousands of years in the making. And so it came to her through lineage. It was passed to her. And at first, when you show up to dance class and she lifts her leg and she lifts her leg and she lifts her leg, it may seem limiting. And the Western response is like, I don't want to do it that way. I want to do it how I want to do it right and go right for the freedom but if you continue lifting your leg in the traditional way and lifting your leg in the traditional way the more you do that the more subtle you go into

it and the more you begin to understand that there actually is a whole world of variation in that movement of lifting your leg that you can do it actually in an infinite amount of different ways so then you've found the freedom in the form or to use another analogy we could say that you're you've planted a seed yes you've planted a seed in your you've planted a seed in your in your uh pot and that pot is the lineage of the form. And then now you've found the freedom in the form. Your tree is going to grow out of that plant, and everybody's tree is unique. Or if you want to go to martial arts, I can do that analogy too.

You've got a big guy, and he's running, and he's just swinging wildly. So his whole body is free. There's not anything in his mind because he's just in a rage. And he's just swinging, swinging, swinging. And he's coming at Bruce Lee. Now in this moment, Bruce Lee is not constricted by his martial arts training. It's not as if as that drunken guy is running at him swinging, he's going to start doing some form as if that's going to help him. He has to be free to move any way he wants. And there's nothing in his mind mind he's going to take a deep breath because he's he's not constricted by his training but ultimately what's going to happen is he's going to he's going to beat that big dude up right because he's got the form within

him to do it and he knows the freedom in the form so this is where it comes into the fact that you know there is a very limiting thing in the world now. It has also to do with just the overabundance of choices, all of which are, or many of which are good. And then what happens is you have a lot of modern people who are just tourists. They're tourists of everything in their life, and they're not masters of anything. And so, you know, Alan Watts used to often joke that rich people don't want to take the 10 years that it takes to learn the art of sailing enough to actually thoroughly enjoy a yacht. So they buy them and park them in the Harbor and have cocktail parties on them. Or maybe a more modern analogy would be buying a very expensive $4,000 camera and then putting it on

auto. Right. Right. Right. Right. And I'm, I think that's endemic in our modern society where we, you know, now it's about instant gratification and getting things, you know, immediately when I want it exactly the way that I want it. And we have lost in a certain respect or a reverence or, or, um, a desire or respect for the journey and the hard work it takes to get to a destination of value and the beauty and appreciation for, you know, wax on wax off or, you know, raising your leg that way, you know, a million times over many, many years. And, you know, I think personally, like I, I love that aspect of the journey. And I think that's where the value lies.

It doesn't value. It doesn't lie in the ultimate mastery that you develop. It lies in what you did to get there and the appreciation that inevitably flows from that. Yeah. And that was there, you know, in the olden days. I mean, that the word mister comes from the German meister, and it's there on the beginning of every name because everybody was a master of something.

Everybody had a Tao, a way. And the traditional ancient Chinese recipe is like 40 times a day for 40 years, and you might figure something out. And if you read the old texts, it's like the assumption is that in figuring that whatever it is out, you also figure out the big it, you know? And there's no real talking about that. But I love a lot of those stories. A lot of those ancient stories where you have a really ordinary person teaching some noble, a life lesson, you know?

I can tell you one of my favorites well this is like joseph campbell and you know going back and this is the you know the hero that's the story that we're it's it's in the fabric of our dna to be attracted to that story yeah i think yeah i can tell you what if you want yes yes uh there's there's a story about a duke and this is one of my favorites there's a story about a duke and and he was studying one of the five classics in Chinese culture, which are really important books. And his wheelwright, in those days wheels were wood, like a wagon wheel kind of thing. His wheelwright was an old man, like 80-some years old, served him now for like 40, 50 years.

Came in the room, and was like, what are you reading? I remember, we're back to this time where like servants don't speak to the Lord. So the Lord's like, you know, very confused by this. What do you mean? What am I reading? I'm reading one of the classics. What's it to you?

And it was written by such and such a master. And the wheelwright says, no, no, no, no, no. You're reading the dregs that he left behind. And now this servant has put his own life at risk. His head's really close to coming off. The Duke puts the books aside and is like, explain yourself. What do you mean? And the wheelwright says, well, I'm illiterate.

I never studied anything in my life. I can only explain in my own way. I'm illiterate. I never studied anything in my life. I can only explain in my own way. And I know that if I take the chisel and I hit the wood and I hit it too hard, it sticks in the wood. If I don't hit it hard enough, it doesn't take wood off.

And there's a perfect point of balance between those two to create the perfect wheel that lasts many, many years and can be on a wagon for up to 10, 20 years. And that perfect point of balance can't be taught. I can't teach it to my son. It took me 20 years to find it. And that master who you're reading of, he found that perfect point of balance, and he can't pass that on in a book. So you're just reading the dregs that he left behind.

And we don't know if he died or not. The story just ends there. So did the Duke take that wisdom in or did he not? We don't know. It's up to you to decide. He used the perfect amount of pressure on that knife to take his head off. That's right. Yeah, that's amazing.

And, you know, I really do think in certain ways that we have lost, you know, that appreciation for mastery. And there's ways of sort of, you know, living and even thriving in our culture without having to really deal with that. Or to be confronted with having to be a master of anything. I mean, people, you have a job, you want to be good at your job. with having to be a master of anything. I mean, people, you have a job, you want to be good at your job, but that's not, that's very different than mastering a craft and the passion and the toil and the obstacles and the years that go into something like that. Or embracing a path, embracing, you know, a practice that would be a life journey for you. And, you know, drinking tea is one of the ways that you could access some inkling as to what journey that might be for you. And I love the universal aspect of tea and the fact that it really does cross all boundaries.

It's very inclusive. And it's very powerful and very beautiful in that way. and drink tea with you and kind of go a little bit deeper into what you've been cultivating and living, really, in your life and your practice. Yeah, sure. the you know you don't to start off with it's not necessary for uh you know for a person to invest a lifetime into for a person to invest a lifetime into tea and um and and like achieve some you know 40 times a day for 40 years that kind of mastery before it it matters it's it's just what i was saying what i was what i was saying is that the what you invest is a relation in any relationship in your life to a person or to a practice or to anything what you invest in that relationship is what you get back

so if you want to drink tea in a mug a bag of tea in a mug while you watch tv there's no tea police going to knock on your door and give you a ticket for that right but the fact of the matter is that if your relationship to tea is superficial, then what you get out of tea is superficiality. And if, you know, if you also, secondly, as my master was joking about, if you put a teabag in a mug and watch TV, if that's what you do, then the kind of tea that's going to find its way into your life is the kind of tea that belongs in a mug while you watch TV. Just as an analogy would be, you know, an analogy would be to use a romantic analogy. If I meet, if your friend George meets a woman and he treats her just like as a sex object and that's his view of women, then how sad for him. He's going to,

his relationships with women are never going to be very deep or profound or transformative on his life. But if he falls in love, then you see him three months later, he's a different person because he's transformed by that relationship, because he's investing his heart and his soul in it. And so what you invest in a relationship is what you get back. And the ways you can connect to us are on all those levels so it's from superficial to deep you know to start off with we have a center in Taiwan and uh it's uh 100% free so we have about 500 visitors a year and from all over the world and all room and board and teaching and tea and everything is free we operate on a donation basis.

So one way is you can come there and you could visit and you could visit for two days and you could drink some tea and you can learn about tea from whatever level you want. You could learn, you know, if you want to study some of the history of tea or the way it's processed or from the more kind of linear or superficial, that's fine you know there's an old

kind of uh deep daoist teaching that's related to this which is that the depths don't fear the surface it's the surface that fears the depths so we're open to anything you know and then there's people that want to take it further and they want to explore more of the form and more of the practice and more of the ways that this can be a part of your life. So it can be a part of your life every other Tuesday and in a casual way just for connecting to people with a little bit of intention and sacred space and using tea that is grown in sustainable green ways that's good for your body and good for that connection. It can be something that is a deeper practice for you every day something you want to learn more about um and we we kind of are there to provide all of that and so that's kind of the first way to connect is to visit our center second um we're you know right now within this month at the most two months we will open a second center uh here in west west la it will not be residential it

will be just a place for essentially daily tea ceremonies weekly tea classes and monthly tea events um we also have a center in russia incidentally so actually this is actually this is the third yeah um and are they all will it be called Global Tea Hut? Global Tea Hut is... And that's the foundation. Yeah, Global Tea Hut is kind of the umbrella under which it all resides. And Global Tea Hut is also another really cool way to participate, which is one of the ways that we get energy for all of this is people around the world. Right now it's 32 countries, which is amazing. People all around the world right now it's 32 countries which is amazing

um people all around the world donate energy in the form of money and then in exchange every month they get a magazine tea and a gift and um the teas is almost all donated and the magazine and all the work on it is also voluntary and the the gifts are amazing things, little bits of teaware or artwork, some of it produced by members of Global Tea. The magazine has the article to describe the tea and where it comes from. Also covers tea from every angle, from the linear and how it's produced to the history and folklore to deeper spiritual truths. So it's kind of a magazine that can touch anyone who has any kind of interest in tea from any level.

And the magic of that also is that, you know, you're drinking this tea with people in 32 countries around the world. And it doesn't really matter that like you're doing it on tuesday and she's doing it on thursday because it's always now and it doesn't matter that you're in malibu and she's in switzerland because it's a globe and we're connected and the fact is also it's very much like a t b and b because you could go stay at these people's homes and they're like you just you know one of the stories that i heard in the last uh six months was uh from russia there was uh one of the gifts that we gave in one of the months was just a little plain kind of sandalwood mala and uh in you know russia mal is just not a popular kind of jewelry it's's not something that you see very often, hardly ever. And so this one brother, he was from St. Petersburg and he was visiting Moscow backpacking and he got into the subway with his mala on and another,

he'd gotten from another. Yeah. And another local looked at the mala and like lifted up his sleeve and was like global T heart and they were like global T heart and they hugged each other and the local wow then was like where are you staying and he's like you know i'm staying at such and such a hostel and he was like no you're not and they went and got his bag and for three days he stayed with this other local person and they drank tea all day together and there's we have a very strong community in in russia and estonia spain southern france la and taiwan and then many other countries in the world and there's definitely a real connection every magazine includes a

section called tea wafer where we introduce a different member of global tea head every month so you get to know each other too and there's a really a real sense in which the the there's a kind of a connection and a sense of community in drinking this tea with these people all around the world. A lot of people come to Taiwan and they buy these teas and take them home. And then, you know, that same farmer donates that same tea and it comes in global teahut. And so, you know, people are often amazed that the same tea can be so different when it's surrounded by this intention of community and connection. And through this, we also often, you know, we support this nonprofit organization, which is to, you know, to build tea spaces and tea schools like this around the world.

Starting first with our center, a big center in Taiwan. We were donated land last year. And it's amazing land it has unbelievably it has a waterfall and we've already planted tea seeds there's going to be a living tea garden there for educational purposes not commercial we don't sell any tea or teaware and uh you know we're going to build a much bigger center that can support even larger groups and that's more beautiful so that it attracts more people and continue this process of creating free tea space.

That, you know, our intention very simply is to introduce people to the positive effects that a spiritual relationship to tea can have on their lives. And or if they already have a relationship to tea can have on their lives and, or if they already have a relationship to tea to deepen it and, and, and help them maybe shift their perspective to it. Or, you know, maybe to use analogy, our, our aim on the one hand is to help people fall in love with tea, or if they're already in love with tea and maybe they take for granted this, this wife that they've had around for a long time to maybe give them a little and help them show them that actually there's so many facets to this being that.

Or to give back what is given to them by sort of, you know, investing in the future of what can be with respect to tea. Yeah, absolutely. Every tea that we send out is either living tea or and or organic plantation tea and it's supporting you know people who are growing tea in a positive green way and many of the magazines as i mentioned the first article is about the tea of the month and many of those articles also include descriptions of those farmers and their beliefs and practices so in this way global tea is also supporting green tea and as we expand global tea hut and get more and more members not only does that generate the income that allows us to build our center it

makes global tea hut itself you were talking about having purchasing power we then start showing up with thousands of people's purchasing power and start making a difference on the on the on the way that tea is produced. And tea is the second most consumed substance on earth. So if it's agriculture changes, what an influence. Nations are going to fall. What a huge influence. Empires are toppling.

Yes, yes. I want that. I know. Cool. Well, I want to hear. I can't let you go without. I got to hear a little bit about your story because, you know, I'm fascinated by what drew you to this world. I mean, you, you, you're Western, you grew up in the West and I understand that you've been, you know, in Asia for quite a long time. I don't know, 15, 20 years or something, but, but, uh, but sort of growing up in America and being attracted to this world, I mean, what was it about it that you knew this was your path? Well, the kind of bigger answer is I just kind of came with eyes faced to the east.

It was since I was a little kid. And that kind of started with a study of martial arts from a very young age. And that study of martial arts kind of, you know, if you want the, like, cute story, the way that it kind of began was I started kicking my sister. Yeah. I don't want the cute story.

I want the heartfelt, real story. Well, that's the story. That is the heartfelt story well that got you into martial arts yeah i started kicking my sister and uh some angel came some angel i've asked 20 times and we can't my mother can't recall who it was but some angel came and told her that if you take him to the city and to the kung fu studio they'll teach him and he'll stop doing that and she did

and they took me there and then you know very quickly I was pulled into the office and asked if I liked coming here

and I said yes very much so and they said well you know if you want to continue coming here you can't do that because that's not

what this is about and so that was kind of the that was kind of the you know that angel

came and those were the first the first steps but even before that there's other cute stories like uh you know i wrote a letter when i was two to santa claus that i wanted a chinese sister for christmas and there was no chinese people in the in my immediate local location and um other a lot of other signs like that um another one you know when i because i was a child of the 70s and at that time everything in america was made in taiwan and i was like a lot of little kids i loved maps and um you know taiwan's this little island that was like as far away as possible from my home on a map because it's like it's just as far away as possible from my home on a map. Because it's as far away as possible. And so I kept, I would nag my parents, I want to go there.

And they were just like, what? Why? You want to go to all places? And I would look at them like they were really, really, really stupid because every single toy I owned said made in Taiwan. Because I was like, what do you mean? This land of toys. What do you mean? Why do you,

why do I want to go there? Cause when you know that is, it's not like toy factories are like assembly lines with a bunch of Chinese people in white coats. They're like, you know, magical lands of right. Here's this island of toys,

you know? And so I was just like, what do you mean? Why do I want to go to Taiwan? That's where all the toys come from. And this, this actually, this conversation went on a lot.

And that's kind of where I ended up. Wow. And mostly, it was approached through meditation and Zen Buddhism. Right. So when does the sort of renunciant aspect of it start to play a part? When I left America immediately after after college i kind of gave away everything i owned and there was an intention of of pursuing something like that i'm gonna ask so there was a conviction then that this is what you were gonna do for sure yes so and tea was always

there you know through through all of that there was a shift that kind of happened um you know i've been drinking tea about 20 25 years and there's a shift somewhere like halfway right in the middle there where like up until that point tea was kind of just a casual kind of part of my day my focus was more on meditation and things and it was just a more physical, you know. And then there was just some subtle realization, I guess, that this friend had been with me all along. And that maybe what I was that it kind of has this bi-directional power in that it can be utilized as our method of self-cultivation, but then also it's a way of expressing our cultivation. And the expression happens in two really powerful ways. One is that, like you were mentioning yoga, if I've done yoga for 25 years and you see that and you're like, you know, that's amazing.

I want some of that. Like, all I can say to you is, like, go do yoga for 25 years. And that's intense. Whereas with tea, it's not like that. I can give you all of my cultivation right now and you can partake in it. Are you going to do that with us tonight? Sure. Absolutely. I was in Ukraine recently, and we did this event

before all the trouble in Ukraine, actually, just before, in November. We did this event where there was a shakuhachi player, and I was serving tea, and he was playing flute. Both are kind of Zen arts. And the organizers insisted that I give a speech at the end. And I was like, come on, let's just have music and tea. And they were like, no, no, you need to talk. So I said, fine.

I didn't even know what I was going to say. I didn't have any idea because the idea of talking at such an event was a little bit foreign to me. And then during the event, I had a kind of insight. And so I realized, okay, what I'm going to say is I'm going to celebrate this insight I just had with everybody out loud. And the insight was a kind of gratitude, you could say. I felt really grateful. And what I said to them is that I'm really grateful about something that I just realized,

which is that this brother and I, we can both, we can both show our Zen in a nonverbal way. And that's really powerful because I show my Zen in a nonverbal way. And like I said, you can't agree with it or disagree with it. You can't believe in it or not believe in it because it's inconceptual. It's just there. That's my Zen. That's my mind. That's my state of mind and i i can show it to you and communicate it to you directly and this is the foundation of zen the first foundation of zen is direct non-verbal transmission between teachers and students so this kind of direct uh non-verbal expression of one's mind is for me uh powerful and then I said no let's have one more song because

I don't want to end with that sentiment and we did we had he played he was gracious and played a kind of encore and then we that's that's how we concluded that but that insight actually did arise in that event you know I realized you know that that the music was was similar in that you know it also was like going into the ears of the people and they didn't have to practice yoga 25 years to partake in in the in the mastery that that shakuhachi player had achieved and similarly you don't have to practice t 25 years to partake in that. You can just drink the tea. There's something powerful in that. And so I realized that somewhere along the way that this isn't just a method of cultivation for myself,

but a way in which I can share my insights with others. Through verbal and nonverbal. through verbal and non-verbal verbal and never that's the power of i love this idea of the power of intention and this practice of you know infusing gratitude through intention yes and verbal and non-verbal there's not any t doesn't you know oppose the sound. It's an opposition to the conceptual. This touches on really deep truth, which is that the stillness is, if your sense of peace is based on quiet,

then it's very fragile. Because even if you go to a mountain, an airplane can fly overhead and you your piece is broken so it has to be you know there has to be internal you know let me ask you a question have you seen you i'm sure you've seen a picture of the earth from space what does that feel like when you look at that picture quiet quiet yeah peaceful it does yeah so looking at that peaceful image of the earth from space so blue so soft so peaceful where are the seven billion egos and their drama and their noise right so the the the stillness is in the noise it's not outside of it it's inside of it

the noise it's not outside of it it's inside of it and the stillness can contain the noise or not all right it doesn't take energy to make stillness it takes energy to make noise it takes gigawatts trillowatts uh you know zigawatts to make up a word it just takes tremendous amount of energy to make a noisy city of los angeles you shut it off and it returns to stillness on its own so it's the stillness is there in the noise we can talk about tea he doesn't mind you know and that's fine but um a non-verbal not talking as you were mentioning silence and and surrounding the tea space with some quiet brings us makes it easier for us we are reminded of the stillness in the tea and awaken that you know more easily and connect to that more easily but over time as you drink tea you know it it's not necessary that every ceremony

be a quiet one there can be um communication too and we can talk about tea and we can be inspired by the talk about tea but ultimately i will say more to you and in a much more deep and intimate way by preparing tea for you than by talking to you about about my mind about saying yeah i mean that was that was what i got from our last experience right we weren't even sure you would say yes that you would come and talk to us yeah i mean there there is yeah there's something sort of very pure and magical in that non-verbal exchange that takes place and hopefully you can feel the expansive quality and the silence even through the podcast because sitting here having this conversation is extremely um expansive and relaxing

and peaceful and quiet yeah well that's the way where you can say this is the verbal part then when you go do the non-verbal part afterwards, right? Yeah, well, there's medicine in the words. I'm saying I feel it within this, even sitting in the presence with all of you beautiful people. Yes, there's medicine in words, too. In the sense that they also do those same kinds of things in the same kind of way, connecting us to nature to ourselves to each other the words can do those things too maybe not as powerfully but definitely they can point the way they can they can orient us towards our our own health or away from our own health yeah sure

yeah that's where they that's where the the non-verbal approach to tea doesn't face that danger. You know, that's where you could offer the perspective that that is, you know, for lack of a better word, better. That the silent approach is, for lack of a better word, better. It's just in that, that it doesn't face that danger of kind of going either way. When you open the tea ceremony to talk that could be positive great talk or it could not right usually it's good but you know in a silent space less right for screwing up yes when it's not or misinterpretation maybe i suppose yeah but i also i wanted to also just ask you since we are a health and wellness podcast,

the Rich Roll podcast is a health and wellness podcast. Can you speak to some of the actual physical benefits of drinking tea from a completely physical? And just before you even do that, to piggyback onto that, you know, I'm fascinated with these sort of purities and how they're aged with these ancient trees. Pura, pura. Pura, yeah. I never know how to say it. And then how the leaves are aged and what happens through that process and, you know, all of the kind of artistry that goes into that and the impacts of on health as a result of that um poor tea is uh that's the it comes from you now which is the kind of birthplace of all tea it's a magical kind of

kind of tea because you know originally from old trees you know there's compromise now and as we spoke about um tea for me i mean there is a lot of research into the kind of science of the physical um health benefits of tea being like an antioxidant where it's purported to help people with weight loss and on and on these go but you know i think it's more of a spiritual tonic. But those things, that's one of the semi-delusory thought forms that we have in the modern world is this kind of separation of body, mind, and spirit, and that the psychologist takes care of the mind and the body's for the doctor and the spirit's for the guru or something.

The crazy shaman yeah but they're all connected they're all one and they all affect each other and and so what i'm saying is that every there's not every single doctor from whatever perspective every western doctor science proves this um that all disease is either caused by stress or compounded by stress. And there's so much research on this. There's a study that came out of Colorado where they had a control group of thousands of people who had cancer, and they had meditators and non-meditators, and some really, I don't remember the exact statistics,

but some outrageously conclusive percentage of the meditators lived longer. And that wasn't even measuring the quality of their life. So there's no illness that isn't impacted by stress reduction. Right? There's no... So I personally orient myself towards tea in this way. Not so much as this tea is good for kidneys and this one's good for stomach aches, as much as tea and the practice that surrounds it allow people to live more present, with less stress,

with more human connection, which is also so important to our health. We're just structured that way. We need family. We need connection. We need to matter. We need to be hugged. We need all that stuff. And that way, I think that this is its main,

the main brunt of where it can provide healing on a physical level is just to help reduce stress right and calm you down you know and and and then there are there are studies in other directions mostly the most common two are that it has antioxidants and so it's it's anti-cancerous and that puberty as you mentioned is very good for digestion and also for weight loss and um you know so but but for me it is it is more of a you know in chinese there's three kinds of energies in the body and um they're jing and chi and shun jing is kind of like the vitality the reproductive energy as well and qi is the breath and the motivating force of the body and shun is the heaven energy and so there are formulas herbal formulas for each of these energies and

tea is primarily actually it falls into all three categories but it's primarily shun tonic and shun means heaven energy. So actually the first materia medica to mention tea, tea predates all materia medicas by thousands of years, but the first one to mention it some 1,500, 2,000 years ago or something, is the use next to tea. And this kind of says everything that I want to say with regards to this. Next to the use for tea it says

to brighten the eyes yeah it sort of says it all doesn't it yeah I think that's a nice place to end it to brighten the eyes let's go brighten our eyes

let's go brighten our eyes well thank you so much that was fascinating. Will you include in this the website where people can sign up for Wuda? I was just going to say, yeah, for people that want to learn more, who are intrigued by what they've heard, the best place to do that and to find out more about Wuda and Global Tea Hut is to go to globalteahut.org, right?

Yes, or.com. They're both the same. Okay. Are there other websites as well, or is that the main place? That's the main place, and that one will link to the other one. So keep it simple. And we are going to be happily and joyfully drinking tea with you monthly. And so if any of the listeners want to be drinking tea with us,

then sign up, and we'll be drinking the same tea together and connecting through the tea leaves, which is really such a beautiful, beautiful practice. And as far as a center opening in West Los Angeles, I will keep everybody posted on that because that's pending, right? Like, you know, it's not sure. Yeah, it's not sure on details because that's pending right like you know it is yeah it's not true on details but extremely pending like uh within the next impending impending impending within the next month all right i would say two maximum i'll let everybody know once that's like all the pieces are in place i mean it's to the point of just like you know uh negotiating um and choosing which of three spots negotiating the lease signing it moving in and fixing it up it's all about that

right now and the idea is that you'll have what like two ceremonies a day or one or two so that kind of the slogan of it is going to be kind of like you know daily tea ceremonies weekly classes on tea so that you can you know learn how to do this at home and learn about tea the physicalities of like how it's processed etc so daily ceremonies weekly classes and monthly events and the events are going to be like you know potlucks or this saturday we're having a big event with music and tea a bunch of musicians who themselves are tea practitioners who are playing tea-inspired music. One of them has recorded a tea album, actually.

So there's going to be tea and music and tea and art, tea and food. Those kind of potluck and community-building events will be happening monthly. So daily ceremonies, weekly classes, monthly events is kind of the crux of what will happen in the center here. And the center in taiwan then is more uh residential and you come and stay and you can delve more deeply into both a meditation practice and tea and uh community excellent so how long are you sticking around here for a while are you going back to taiwan yeah i'm going back i'm here for two weeks gotcha and that's one of the big um we're doing a ton of events in these couple weeks, and that's kind of the crux of the energetic difference is that usually I'm here kind of raising awareness for our center in Taiwan,

but this time it's all about the center here. So all the events are based around that. That's right, getting that going. It's beautiful. Yeah, it's exciting. around that we look forward to it alright Wuda thanks man thank you beautiful alright everybody we're out of here

peace plants tea alright everybody that's it. That's our show. We're done. How'd that go for you? It's pretty intense, yeah.

I hope you enjoyed it. Even if it was something entirely new for you, I hope that it broadened your horizons. Speaking of broadening your horizons, if you're stuck or frustrated with your life and not sure how to get off the dime, you might be interested in checking out my new course on mindbodygreen.com. It's called The Art of Living with Purpose, How to Set and Achieve Goals, Transform Your Life, and Become Your Best, Most Authentic Self. Kind of the theme of this

podcast, isn't it? Anyway, it's over two hours of streaming video. It's got downloadable tools and resources and an online forum, a Q&A forum where I can interact with you. And all told, it addresses all the essential foundational principles and practices behind every successful sustained life transformation, a valuable toolbox that contains the assets required you need to make the changes in your life necessary to become the person you always wanted to and deserve to be. So no hard sell here, but if this feels like something that you might benefit from, then take a look. You can find it at mindbodygreen.com. I also wrote a blog post that kind of explains a little bit of the background and my thinking and why I decided to put this course up.

That's on at richroll.com. You can find it's my most recent blog post up there. So you can check that out. Thanks so much for all the support you guys. I do this for you. I love you guys. If you want to support the show, tell a friend and use the Amazon banner at richroll.com for all your Amazon purchases. You know how to do that. You can also donate to the show. There's a donate button on the homepage at richroll.com and keep the Instagrams coming. I love it. People have been Instagramming pictures of themselves, listening to the show, whether they're working out or commuting or what have you. And I love that stuff. I've seen all of them. Make sure you tag my name so I can catch it and give it a like or a comment there. So keep that up.

That's a great way to kind of spread the love, a fun way too. So I appreciate it. Go to richroll.com for all your plant power provisions. We've got all kinds of stuff there with more stuff coming soon. We've got nutritional products like my plant-based athletic recovery supplement, Jai Repair. We've got our downloadable cook supplement, Jai Repair. We've got our downloadable cookbook, Jai Seed. It's a PDF, 77 awesome recipes. By the way, we have a new cookbook coming. It's going to be coming out this winter. Not sure exactly of the release date, but this is going

to be a hardcover, like coffee table style, real tangible physical cookbook. We've been working on it really hard over the past nine months or so. Incredible photography, an abundance of amazing new recipes, and we're really proud of it. I'm going to be talking more about that in coming weeks and months, but that's on the horizon. We've got our Jai Release Meditation Program, all that stuff. You guys know what's there. So go check that out if you haven't already. And that's it. Thanks, you guys.

I will see you next week with another awesome guest. And until then, why don't you do this? Why don't you contemplate your next cup of tea with a little more mindfulness? Reach out to someone less fortunate than yourself and lend a hand and make a point to reconnect with a long lost friend. If you do this, I promise you that this week will be better than last week. Peace. Plants. plants.