A Beginner’s Mind
I just made myself a cup of tea. Tea pleases me. I see tea and I think, OK I am going to drink you now. Be warned. You will be in my belly soon and there is nothing you can do to stop me.
My problem with tea is the whole spiritual side of it. Like oooooo tea will bring you inner peace and love and joy and harmony and transport you to ancient China when life was simpler and not at all full of war and the Huns and Chinese fingertraps or maybe you will be transported to Japan and don’t you know the Japanese live forever and are so wise because they drink tea and please enjoy this cup of tea, it has the essence of blossoms and you will be calm and refreshed, rejuvenated even, and maybe you will see fairies that will transport you to a place with a unicorn. Anyway, the point is that I drink tea because it’s tasty not because it’s going to enlighten the crap out of me. If you are drinking tea to be transported you have some serious issues. Speaking of transport, where is my jet pack? If tea can give me a jet pack then holy crap I am STOKED.
But check this out, the tea I am drinking is called “Beginner’s Mind Green Tea”. I have no idea what that means. A beginner’s mind! Do I have a beginner’s mind? I always thought of my mind as more intermediate-to-advanced. NO who am I kidding, I think of my mind as ADVANCED GENIUS STEPHEN HAWKING Level 10. And now I’m drinking this “beginner’s” tea and now my brain has been slighted. Slighted, I say!
Here is what the packaging says:
All things have their own inner truth, no matter how “imperfect” they might seem. If a sip of tea causes me, no matter how briefly, to be transported outside myself, I arrive into perfection itself. And I have known a cup of tea to do just the thing. The best of many praises that can be sung for tea is that it inspires Tea Mind. Also tea is a mild diuretic so I do not recommend drinking tea if you are very thirsty.
OK, the last sentence is mine. Fine. But seriously. WHAT??? COME ON! So now I have a “beginner’s mind” and an “imperfect” inner truth. There’s only so much bad news I can take by drinking a stupid cup of tea.
