Tea as Presence

Tea is not the source of happiness;
it is merely a wholesome meditation,
a stepping stone to Primordial Peace,
where in the seen, there is only the seen,
in the heard, there is only the heard,
in the felt, there is only the felt.
and in cognition, only vision.
When there is no you here,
there is no you there,
and This Alone
is the end
of stress.

The Truth is ineffable (lit. too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words). The story of where your tea came from or how it was processed is not of great importance, and can be a hinderance to the unspeakable experience of Life.

Presence (Impersonal Awareness) of The Present is our fundamental Essence.

The experience of this togetherness beyond distinction is the reason for everything that we do as beings, and drinking tea is no different. Being aware of this longing for fundamental peace allows any process to become a meditation on wholeness.

I will attempt to briefly explain the inter-relative experience of tea to you.

The tea, the drinker, and the environment are an inseparable whole, and thus your mood, physical tensions, the weather, the song of the birds, water quality, and infinitely more factors are indivisibly woven together to appear as This Moment. To try to grasp all of these everchanging factors with the mind is futile, and even to distinguish one factor as being more important creates the illusion of separation between an experiencer and experience (the subject-object duality). By allowing ourselves to be grounded and equanimous, all factors (content) naturally gather into an intrinsically and effortlessly self-aware Presence (context).

The energizing quality of tea can sharpen the mind. By using the diamond-like mind, we may cut through all illusions of separation, arriving fully Here in our wholesome revelation.

The goal of Whispering Pines is to spread Enlightenment. Enlightenment is none other than the all-pervasive peace revealed by indiscriminately and directly cognizing the fundamental togetherness of This Moment.

I'm in the process of expanding this section of the website to include guided tea meditations for the purpose of revealing our fundamentally wholesome nature. More to come!

As Our Beingness,
Brenden Gebhart
Owner and Tea Mixologist