Tea Chan Program for Young People, in Dharma Drum Vanvouver Center
On Jan. 19th, 2017, the last Friday night, over 25 participants came to Dharma Drum Vancouver Center to enjoy the Tea Chan (meditation) together — practicing Tea Chan techniques and tasting the flavour of Chan through brewing and drinking tea.
Why we call it a Program? It is not just an activity held for one night. Before that, 8 volunteers attended the Tea Chan training every week for one month. They learnt not just the techniques of brewing tea and serving tea, but the way of appreciating this Asian art of living Chan. More than that, tea meditation requires us to apply our meditation methods and to embody the spirit of Mahayana Buddhism, which is to serve the tea in accordance with the need of guests and not for the sake of demonstrating our best techniques.
The event on Friday came into 4 sections: Tea Chan, mindful eating, watching a short film and discussion. Tea Chan is a silent way of communication, by which trust was established and the distance between one another was shortened. We could sense the wondrous change developing during the course. Then the facilitator led us to apply that mindfulness to eating. Surprisingly, it was such a refreshing experience as eating is so common in our daily life. We found eating food was not just to satisfy hunger, but a joyful experience while using our six sense organs. With a calm mind and peaceful composure, we observed the food’s shape and color, smelled its aroma, felt the texture, tasted it wholeheartedly. We learnt to be fully aware how the food moved and interacted with our teeth, tongue, esophagus and stomach. Through this clear and comprehensive awareness, the gratitude to food arose naturally.
The short movie was quite inspiring, which talked about our immediate reaction to setbacks — blaming. In the following discussion, we reflected on our own experience and discussed how Chan methods could help dissolve negative emotions, so we could reduce the occurrence of blaming on ourselves and others. The whole event was so relaxing but rewarding. We enjoyed having tea, eating, chatting and learning in very peaceful environment.
Young people always have a very tight schedule and it is hard to set a period of time to practice Chan. The Chan program by DDYP is trying to show us an easy way to practice Chan and get benefits of Chan at every present moment. Welcome young people to join our series of activities in the future as participants or volunteers!
Written By: Droma Liu, Dharma Drum Vancouver Center