Why I Drink Tea

participating in a culture of mindfulness

Chris’s tea kettle, designed by Sori Yanagi

“Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the whole earth revolves—slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future. Live the actual moment. Only this moment is life.” 

—Thich Nhat Hanh

I drink tea every day, and prefer it to coffee—something most Americans find unusual. Often, curious friends ask me about my love for what Samuel Johnson once called “the infusion of this fascinating plant.” This is my attempt at an explanation. 

When I talk about tea, I mean the tea plant, Camellia sinensis, from which all white, green, oolong, and black teas are produced. I like all kinds of tea, but especially Japanese green teas, black tea from Assam, and pu-erh, fermented black tea from China. As I write this, I’m drinking a cup of Honey Aroma black tea from Taiwan, a gift from my sister. 

Let’s get the science out of the way: tea is rich in antioxidants, and has been claimed to have a variety of health benefits, although the evidence is somewhat mixed. In addition to having less caffeine than coffee, tea contains the amino acid L-theanine, which balances out the stimulant effects of caffeine and tends to promote a state of calm alertness. Theanine has been reported to increase serotonin and dopamine in the brain, and to induce alpha brain waves. Compared to coffee, I find tea much more conducive to the kind of work I do.

But for me, tea is not about phytonutrients or health benefits. I actually think that way of looking at tea is too materialistic. Instead, I see drinking tea as a way of participating in a culture of mindfulness. By this I mean that drinking tea can be a mindfulness practice, but also that it’s more than a practice—it’s a cultural tradition that evolved with mindfulness as a central value.

I first learned to drink tea from my mother, who takes her black tea the English way, with milk and biscuits. But I didn’t fall in love with tea until college, while studying Asian religions. I learned how tea had become a part of Buddhist and Taoist culture in China, and how the Chinese and Japanese tea ceremonies had refined tea drinking into a fine art. I have fond memories of the many hours I spent studying at the tea shop in my little college town. 

At 20, traveling around India in search of enlightenment, I sat on street corners, sipping chai from tiny clay cups that scorched my fingers. I visited Darjeeling in the middle of winter, savoring the muscatel liquor of the “Champagne of teas” while looking out over terraced tea fields covered in snow. 

After graduating from college, I worked in a tea shop that also imported and distributed tea across North America, and where my boss was a student of chadō, the Japanese way of tea ceremony. Serving tea to customers gave me something meditative to do while I pondered what I wanted to do with my life.

And I would never have been able to get through grad school, with its endless books to read and papers to write, without many cups of rich, earthy pu-erh tea.

Today, tea plays a starring role in my morning routine. Every day, I wake up at six, make my bed, and meditate. After getting up from my cushion, I walk into the kitchen, fill my tea kettle with water, and turn up the heat on my stove. Most days, I use a removable brewing basket to steep loose leaf tea directly into the brown Hasami porcelain mug that most of my friends and clients have seen on Zoom.

Once my tea has cooled to drinking temperature, I try to take at least the first few sips mindfully. I hold the cup in my hands, feel its warmth, inhale the aromatic steam, and savor the first sip, endeavoring to truly taste it. After I’ve sat with my tea like this for a few moments, I open my journal or laptop and write, sometimes reading a poem or a passage from a spiritual book first. 

I consider it essential for me to take this time for reflection and creative work before I get down to the more mundane business of the day—and especially before I look at my email inbox. It’s what allows me to show up the way that I do in my work, my relationships, and the rest of my life.

Drinking tea is a way of pressing “pause” in the midst of an otherwise busy existence. While, to the untrained observer, drinking a cup of tea may appear to be doing something, it’s actually a way of doing nothing—of reverting to a state of being. In a culture where we’re encouraged to do all the things, all the time—where time is money, and if we’re not working, we’re supposed to be spending—drinking tea is subtly subversive. Unlike coffee, tea doesn’t actually make us more productive. Drinking tea is a way of taking life back from the culture of busy-ness.

As Kakuzo Okakura wrote in The Book of Tea, “Tea is more than an idealization of the form of drinking: it is a religion of the art of life.” The art of life is the art of being. From the perspective of the Asian contemplative traditions, simple awareness of being is our true nature. So drink tea, and return to your true Self. You’ll be joining a tradition of mindfulness that’s thousands of years old.

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Thanks for reading,

Chris Cordry, LMFT