If one wanted just about any beverage including water could be classed as an intoxicant depending on your mindset. What we are really looking at here is the abuse of intoxicants and how such abuse can interfere in our daily life and practice.

Tea generally has more caffeine than coffee. Yet coffee drinkers tend to drink more coffee in a day than tea drinkers drink cups of tea. The anti-oxidents found in green tea can and are a great help to heart patients. I know since I have gone through major heart surgery about two years ago. My doctors recommended three to four cups a day. Much the same has been claimed by doctors in the case of red wines due to their content of anti-oxidents.

My late Master was also a life long tea drinker as are a majority of Japanese. At times he used to call his basic teaching as "drink a cup of tea Dharma." Anytime I went to visit him he would bring each of us a cup of tea with the admonishment to "have a cup of tea, drink it slowly, and concentrate on its texture, smell, and Relax and just enjoy the tea as it is, just tea." In this small way he brought a relaxed and slower pace to the day and each meeting. A very nice little lesson in both mindfulness and concentration. Not to mention we both had a love of tea.

I also find that the small amounts of caffeine I do knowingly drink each day tend to counter the effects of all the meds I have to take, in that they make me very lethargic and sleepy at times. So in that way they tend to return my body and mind to more of a proper balance.

So much like river I see my first cup of tea in the morning as the start of my days meditation, a lesson in mindfulness, good for what ails me, and a nice way of remembering my late Master.

Tasogare Shinju