Each morning, my day begins with a cup of tea. It has been like that for as long as I can remember. Growing up in England over sixty years ago, tea was simply part of daily life. It was always there. It was served at breakfast, sometimes after lunch, and always during the afternoon. When my mother took us to visit her friends, tea was always served, together with sandwiches and cakes. And when her friends came to visit, the service was just the same. For a small boy, this was not always enjoyable since there was nothing to do but watch adults enjoy their conversation and drink tea.

It was not until I left University that tea became something of interest for me - as opposed to just being part of daily life. Like many people of my generation,, I had become a coffee drinker. I used to buy my coffee beans from a small shop in Old Compton St., in Soho in London, “The Algerian Coffee Store, " which is still there, under the same family ownership, looking much the same as it did in the early 1960's. In addition to coffee, the shop sold a small selection of Chinese teas - Jasmine, Gunpowder Green, Keemun, and Orange Blossom Oolong. I had never seen teas that looked like this and so I bought some of each of them immediately they caught my eye. Luckily the storekeeper told me how to prepare them otherwise I would have made them English-style with milk and sugar.

And so my journey with tea began. In those days, finding out information was much more difficult than today. There was no Internet. There were few books about tea that were in-print, and very few shops sold a wide variety of teas. My knowledge and experience accumulated slowly, step by step as I traveled around the world in the years that followed.

The 1960’s were also a period when interest in Eastern religions and customs blossomed in London. Both the Beatles and the Dalai Lama played a role in stimulating this interest. Around that time, I came across the writings of Suzuki Daisetsu ( 鈴木大拙 ) about Zen and Buddhism. Suzuki lived much of his life in the USA and traveled often in Europe as well as to other countries. He wrote in English and played a leading role in making the philosophy of Zen Buddhism accessible to Western minds. He had much to say about how these ideas had evolved in Japan to encompass all aspects of life in both its material and spiritual experiences. I bought a second-hand copy of Suzuki’s “Zen and Japanese Cuture.”  The book  awakened my first interest in Buddhism, Japan, and the Far East, and has traveled around the world with me ever since. Naturally, I noticed that tea played a role in the way of life Suzuki described.

For centuries, tea has played a role in the social, economic, and spiritual affairs of mankind. For tea itself, this is perhaps an even more remarkable journey than for man.

How strange it is that the leaves of a tree growing naturally in the mountainous rain forest jungles of South West China should become the world's most widely consumed beverage - after water itself.

According to the legend, tea was discovered by the Chinese emperor Shen Nong almost 5,000 years ago. Shen Nong is also considered to be the founder of herbal medicine in China. By tasting hundreds of herbs, he was able to record their medical values. Apparently, one day a leaf from a tea tree dropped into a pot of boiling water, and so tea drinking began.

This story has its counterparts in many other countries. It was only natural for our ancestors to explore the plants that grew nearby in the search for foods and medicines. In Europe and the Middle East, herbs like Chamomile and Peppermint have histories as old as that of tea, as ancient documents and archaeological discoveries have shown. Yet despite the merits of these, and many other plants, none has ever rivaled the roles played by the leaves of the tea plant in human affairs.

Why so? One can only speculate about this interesting question.

However one factor is clearly the interaction of tea and Buddhism. The spread of tea throughout China and Asia is closely related to the spread of Buddhist thought. As is well known, Buddhist priests began to value tea when they discovered it could be an aid to concentration and wakefulness as they contemplated the scriptures or chanted their prayers.

In Europe, the history of tea began when sea traders began to bring back cargoes of exotic goods from the Far East.

Portuguese traders imported Tea from the East, and its high price and exoticism helped it to become very fashionable at the royal court in Lisbon. By the mid-seventeenth century, it was very popular in Portugal. Tea had also gained popularity in elite society in Holland, through Dutch trade in the East, and in neighboring countries. But at this stage, Britain lagged behind. The famous English diarist Samuel Pepys first mentioned drinking tea in his diary entry for 25 September 1660. He wrote that he had been discussing foreign affairs with some friends, 'And afterwards did send for a Cupp of Tee (a China drink) of which I never drank before'. Since Pepys was a member of the wealthy and fashionable elite of London, his habits influenced others.

Later, in 1662, the English King Charles II married a Portuguese princess, Catherine de Braganza who brought the king a chest of tea, as one of his wedding presents. The king soon learned to enjoy tea and very quickly it became a popular drink among the wealthy and aristocratic.

However it was not till the British began growing tea in India that the price of tea slowly became affordable by ordinary people. And it was not until the later stages of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century that tea slowly became a truly popular drink. Factory managers discovered that if they gave their workers cups of tea to drink, they could work longer hours and there were fewer accidents. The custom of adding milk and sugar to tea also became very widespread at this time - the sugar provided the factory workers with enough calories to keep on working!

Strangely, adding drinking tea with milk and sugar were also part of life in China's Imperial Court.  Even today, as you travel across China, you can experience many different ways of preparing tea, some of which date back thousand of years. These include using freshly picked mature tea leaves prepared with salt, chili, and lemon and fermented tea leaves that almost resemble kimchi!

To my way of thinking, all these different rituals share two important qualities.

The first is that drinking tea is usually a social activity - it involves the interaction of a group of people who become united in the act of preparing and drinking tea. For a moment at least, people put aside their differences and worries and attend only to the world of tea.  

The second is that, in a fast paced world, tea drinking is a slow paced activity. As the world has accelerated, tea has maintained its own rhythm and its own time scale as the centuries have rolled by.

It is from the unusual combination of these two qualities that tea delivers the greatest benefit of all to human life. When people have time to think and experience together in a relaxed atmosphere, many differences and problems simply disappear or become easy to solve. There is a sharing of experience, encouragement, and togetherness. People come together and can be themselves.

In this way, the drinking of tea provides a moral compass to navigate our lives in an increasingly complex and dangerous world. One has only to pick up a newspaper, or watch the news on TV, to realize that there is a moral crisis in human affairs.

For this reason, whenever visitors come to our home, I always invite them to share a cup of tea. It can be a hot drink on a cold day or a cool drink on a hot day. But it is always an invitation to put away the noise of the world and share the values I feel are important to human society and which I  try to uphold in my own life.