The First Chan-tea Culture Festival
by Danny Fisher
Via the great Phil Ryan at the Tricycle Editors’ Blog: The first-ever Chan-tea Culture Festival was held recently in Beijing at the Tanzhe Temple. Global Times has more:
The two-month long event attracted a large number of tourists and was aimed at helping people understand the unique Chan-tea culture that has existed in China for over 1,000 years.
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Tea drinking has always been part of the history of Tanzhe Temple and can be traced back to the Western Jin Dynasty (265-316) when the temple was first built. At the time, the monks would pick tea leaves in the mountains behind the temple, dry them and make them into drinkable tea. The beverage proved to help the monks during long meditation sessions and became part of their daily ritual.
The long history of drinking tea at Tanzhe Temple saw the monks and masters gradually combine their understanding of Chan Buddhism with tea drinking, forming the Chan-tea culture of Tanzhe Temple.
[Image via Global News.]
