I was listening to a podcast recently (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTJYETp-seM) and during a segment that they were speaking about Ayahuasca and psychoactive compounds I heard something that gave me the nudge I needed to lock an idea down.
Probably in many spots peppered around this site I would write my opinion that only mediocre tea tastes like tea, because good tea tastes strong enough like something else for the brain to wander there, say, an apple. Great tea tastes like a memorable apple, and the events that surrounded it, the place, the people, the mood, etc. Excellent tea tastes like the best version of that apple, in a setting that you haven’t experienced but could fantasize it up, an apple on a ferris wheel, on a warm clear night with fireworks going off in the background and a pink, floral scent in the sky, something like that. The best tea smells like tea. So the worst tea and the best tea both just smell like tea — this has been a struggle to cope with, it’s not wrong, but there is a significantly important point missing that I failed to realize until now.
At 2am, I was doing the tasting for the ‘Ray of Hope’ Yamakai sencha sold on this site. This is my time to be alone, unbothered, it’s my most peaceful time to drink tea, and I have the clearest mind of any point in the day.
I got the tea into a very special flavor state, let’s just call it a ‘profound window’ where I think the flavor is quite literally on a needle point, it’s so perfectly balanced that tipping it in any direction will cause it to fall, and in this point it’s really, well, profound. A lot of teas have this window, it’s just very time consuming to find, I got lucky tonight and got it on my 3rd try. I recreated the pot twice more just to enjoy, and to make sure it wasn’t a fluke.
I was sitting in the unfortunately temporary profundity, and once it wore off, some of the podcast started playing back in my mind. There is a part where they’re discussing alternate states of reality, the reality we inhabit we I think they called ‘the problem solving reality’ and that by taking hallucinogenics and psychoactive medicines (or drugs) you can ‘temporarily leave this reality and explore others’ which people have been doing for centuries throughout the Aztec/Mayan/Egyptian/Mesopotamian/Other cultures. The ideas inspired or learned by visiting these other realities are at the heart of some of humanities greatest discoveries. It’s a great podcast, I recommend it, but that’s what you’ll need to know for what I’m about to say.
A mediocre tea smells like tea, the best tea smells like tea, and wonderful world of olfactory journeys exist in the middle. I think… you can’t really think about anything when you’re drinking the best tea. You’re forced into a world of thoughtlessness. Your mind cant wander, it’s too drawn to the tea, like a black hole is created in your mind that your attention cant escape, and outside thoughts cannot penetrate. This is a pretty monumental thought for me, because I’ve had several teas over the course of my life where I basically spaced out and drank the whole thing without realizing it. It’s like time skipped 10 minutes and my body acted on its own.
It’s said that a mortal can cultivate immortality through taoist teachings, the path of tea is one of them. As someone who has very little knowledge (next to zero) of this concept, and is almost entirely reliant discovering things on my own, I’d be willing to bet that whatever this secret teaching about immortality is, it’s found down this path of mindlessness, on another plane of reality, and that the human imagination if forced into it, in the right circumstances, can create doors to these dimensions.
Cool, well now it’ 3:30am. Guess I’ll go drink some more tea. Cheers
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