CURRENT MISSION

Unconditional Kindness (and Tea Bibbing)

ABOUT ME

I love Tea - from brewing to observing, tasting and smelling, feeling and sharing, and learning all about tea. I'm very interested in the Way of Tea and the experience associated with it. See my blog at http://tealoveandcare.wordpress.com/about/ or by clicking on the "My Website" link under my general information. I don't smoke or drink alcohol but I'll go out and enjoy a good time nonetheless.I studied Mathematics for 5 years. During that time, I was a Resident Advisor on campus for 2 years, a math tutor for 4 years, and I worked a weekend maintenance shift at a plywood mill for 5 years. I also had a chance to go on an exchange to Japan and study at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto. I've been tree planting throughout central British Columbia and I lived in the United States where I was an inside student of Shrine life and Aikido at Tsubaki Grand Shrine of America in Washington state. I recently returned home from Costa Rica where I volunteered on a farm working with farm animals and farmers every day in the beautiful tropics off Lake Arenal.Check my website (http://tealoveandcare.wordpress.com/) for all my latest adventures.

PHILOSOPHY

"We Become What We Think About Most"
- Earl Nightinggale

"You Must Become The Change You Want To See In The World,"
- Mahatma Gandhi

"No Written Word, No Spoken Plea
Can Teach Our Children What They Should Be,
Nor All The Books On All The Shelves, It’s What The Teachers Are Themselves"
- TEDTalk

"True wisdom lies not in the answers we give, but in the questions we ask."
- ?

"Advanced Techniques Are The Basics Mastered"
- Derek Hansen

"The ultimate measure of human beings is not where they stand in moments of comfort and convenience, but where they stand at times of challenge and controversy."
- Martin Luther King Jr.

"Everything is unfolding as it has to unfold. We can’t control what is happening but we can choose how we will respond."
– Kurt Spellmeyer

"The greatest discovery of my generation is that humans can alter their lives by altering their attitudes."
– Willaim James

"Learning goes on forever because the possibility of failing goes on forever. Your only chance of growing is in continuing to fail."
- Kurt Spellmeyer

"We Cannot Do Great Things On This Earth. We Can Only Do Small Things With Great Love."
- Mother Teresa

"Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
- Margaret Mead

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A Cup of Tea

Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era, received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!”

“Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”

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- Intelligent people can solve many different problems. Wise people know which of those problems to solve.
- Ajahn Sona

"Wisdom teaches me that I am nothing.
Love teachers me that I am everything.
And between the two, my life flows.
- Gil Fronsdal quoting a Tibetan Buddhist Teacher

"Every event that happens has small probability, but it happens. Physics tells us about the universe - it’s big, rare events happen all the time – including life – and that doesn't’ mean it’s special."
- Lawrence Krauss

What is Zen Anyway?

A Japanese corpse
serving tea
- Poetry by Natalie Goldberg

"Ultimately, meditation can allow us to have happiness independent of conditions and that is one heck of an awesome claim"
- Shinzen Young

Compassion
Like the Earth's surface
Is willing and ready to receive all leaves that fall

"I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be"
- Einstein

"Enlightenment is not a process of learning, it is a process of unlearning"
- Dr. Kat Domingo

"Nothing external to me has the power to take away my peace of heart and mind. I may not be in total control of what happens in my life, but I certainly am in charge of how I choose to perceive my experience "
- Jill Bolte Taylor (My Stroke of Insight)

"But let the mind beware that though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious!"
- Jack Kerouac (Dharma Bumbs)

'Knowing yourself goes far deeper than the adoption of a set of ideas or beliefs. Spiritual ideas and beliefs may at best be helpful pointers, but in themselves they rarely have the power to dislodge the more firmly established core concepts of who you think you are, which is part of the conditioning of the human mind.”
- Eckhart Tolle

"Let the first act of every morning be to make the following resolve for the day: I shall not fear anyone on Earth...I shall not bear ill will toward anyone.I shall not submit to injustice from anyone.I shall conquer untruth by truth."
- Mahatma Gandhi

"Meditate. Live purely. Be quiet. Do your work with mastery. Like the moon, come out from behind the clouds! Shine."
- Buddha

"Salvation is not elsewhere in place or time. It is here and now"
- Eckhart Tolle

"The spiritual walk of life doesn’t require anything additional of us. It only requires that we release ourselves from the noise of our mind. It’s about the willingness to release ourselves into stillness."
- Rodney Smith (Seattle Insight Meditation Society)

"Creativity is not thought driven. Seeing something free of thought – THAT is a creative moment!"
- Rodney Smith

Exerting the mind to empty the mind is no way to empty the mind
- Psychology of Zen I

"From the moment you enter the dewy path until
it is time to say your goodbye, you should esteem
your host with the utmost respect, in the true
spirit that this very encounter will occur but
once in your lives."
- ???

"Surely everyone is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a wintry fireside: candles at four o'clock, warm hearth rugs, tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies to the floor, whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without"
- Thomas De Quincey (New Tea Lovers Treasury)

"As an elixir of sobriety and wakeful tranquility, tea is also a means of spiritual refreshment and the ritual of preparing and partaking of it is an occasion for spiritual conviviality."
- New Tea Lovers Treasury

"If we offer quiet to whatever arises, then whatever arises will not expand beyond what it is!"

"We can watch our tea, using it as a mirror to reflect the ways in which our every action, in all that we do, is affecting the tea. Any change we make in our daily life will cause ripples across the surface of our tea liquor; and if we just listen carefully, the tea itself will guide us to the balanced place where the times of being an ego and the times of stillness are in harmony. Then we don't even need to watch or reflect on the ways our lives affect our tea, because at that time our lives will be tea, and tea our lives."
- Henry Taiki Takahashi

"The artist who aims at perfection in everything, achieves it in nothing"
- Eugene Delacroix

"As machines become more and more efficient and perfect, so it will become clear that imperfection is the greatness of man"
- Ernst Fischer

"Nature doesn not hurry, yet, everything is accomplished"
- Lao Tse

"What makes us discontented with our condition is the absurdly exaggerated idea we have of the happiness of others"
- French Proverb

Interests

I'm interested in spiritual walks of life, Aikido, culture, meditation, religion, music, culinary arts, raw & living food lifestyles, permiculture, natural farming, reading, poetry, and of course - drinking tea.

• animals
• farm animals
• arts
• culture
• books
• poetry
• dining
• coffee
• meditation
• drinking
• reading
• volunteer work
• blogging
• music
• surfing
• sports
• teaching
• mathematics
• physics
• psychology
• religion
• tourism
• volunteering

Music, Movies, and Books

Books: The Power of Now The AlchemistThe Monk Who Sold His FerrariThree cups of TeaDharma BumsThe New Tea Lovers TreasuryTea Life Tea MindAikido MastersThe Way of the Peaceful WarriorZen Mind Beginners MindMycellium RunningOne Straw RevolutionIntroduction to PermacultureTeaming with MicrobesStill Life with Woodpecker

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

- Traditional rice planting on a hillside in Nara, Japan.

- Working as an inside student of Shrine Life and Aikido at Tsubaki Grand Shrine of America in WA state.

- Taiwan Oolong Study Tour 2011

Teach, Learn, Share

Teach: Mathematics, Beatboxing, all about Tea, English, basic Japanese (日本語), about Aikido

Learn: about Coffee, Spanish, Surfing, Tea, Music, Culture, permiculture, natural farming, anything!

Share: Food, music, gripping tales about life, volunteer work, sports - and all over a cuppa TEA!