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Jun 5th, '09, 22:16
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A Daoist Tea Sage

by Wu De » Jun 5th, '09, 22:16

This one isn't for sale. www.sagacitea.com

The calligraphy reads:

"Tea liquor is the king of all medicine
Drink old tea and open the Shadowy Portal"

(Note: here "medicine" is used in the sense Native Americans use the word)


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Jun 6th, '09, 05:11
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A Friend Stopped by For Tea :)

by Wu De » Jun 6th, '09, 05:11

Cha Chong
On my site for sale (for a short time): www.sagacitea.com

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www.sagacitea.com
Last edited by Wu De on Jun 6th, '09, 05:15, edited 2 times in total.

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Jun 6th, '09, 05:14
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Yet Another Tea Sage (There's lots of them)

by Wu De » Jun 6th, '09, 05:14

Also on my site for a bit. www.sagacitea.com

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www.sagacitea.com

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Jun 7th, '09, 05:06
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Tea Brothers

by Wu De » Jun 7th, '09, 05:06

Tea sages drinking tea beneath the mountains.

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www.sagacitea.com

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Jun 7th, '09, 05:07
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One Taste

by Wu De » Jun 7th, '09, 05:07


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Jun 8th, '09, 11:40
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very late welcome

by Mrs. Chip » Jun 8th, '09, 11:40

Welcome Aaron, and sorry for the very delayed hello and glad you are here with us on TeaChat! Being married to the mod, although has many advantages, also has the disadvantage of having to share computer time, and his share is always larger than mine! :wink:

Anyway, your work is just breathtaking and adds a very nice element to the forum. There are a few of your works that are on my 'want/need to have' list. Guess I better decide quickly before they are sold.

Thank you for creating TeaChat art for us.

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Jun 9th, '09, 00:41
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by Wu De » Jun 9th, '09, 00:41

And thank you for the heartfelt words.

A cup always awaits you here

Until then, may you have a thousand, thousand cups
Each one the Morning Dew

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Jun 9th, '09, 22:46
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Calligraphy

by Wu De » Jun 9th, '09, 22:46

Here are two pieces of calligraphy I just added to my site.

They say, "The taste of Tea is the taste of Zen"

Interestingly, I wrote it a bit like an English palindrome: a group of words that can be read in either direction, like "tenet" for example. In Chinese, these pieces can be read as "Tea and Zen have the same flavor" ; "Zen and Tea have the same flavor" ; "One flavor, Tea and Zen" ; and/or all of the above.

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www.sagacitea.com

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Jun 9th, '09, 23:38
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by iannon » Jun 9th, '09, 23:38

I must say I really like the "Tea Sages" one..wonderful

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Jun 11th, '09, 08:27
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Endless Sages, drunk on tea

by Wu De » Jun 11th, '09, 08:27

Two more colorful pieces:

I call this one:
"A sage, some tea and a dead tree..."

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www.sagacitea.com
Last edited by Wu De on Jun 11th, '09, 08:32, edited 1 time in total.

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Jun 11th, '09, 08:30
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Colorful sages part II

by Wu De » Jun 11th, '09, 08:30

I call this one "No Master Here"

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www.sagacitea.com

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Jun 11th, '09, 08:31
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by brandon » Jun 11th, '09, 08:31

Aaron, you paint the green crackle chawan quite often.
Is it inspired by a real piece? Would love to see it.

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Jun 11th, '09, 08:45
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chawan

by Wu De » Jun 11th, '09, 08:45

Bhai,

Indeed, my favorite kind of Japanese teaware is antique Shino, which is crackled creamish-brown like the Kyusu painting shown in this thread and on my site. The cracks all fill up with tea, turn brown and are--to me--oh so delightful. Sometimes, I lose myself in their patterns, sipping Gyo... (Below is one of mine from the Meiji period)

That chawan belongs to the Japanese master I studied with when I lived in Japan. I believe it was of Korean origin, and definitely very old. It was cream and turquoise and covered in cracks that were also filled with tea stains. I used to revolve it in my hands for up to an hour, like a mantra. I only wish I had a photo.

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Wishing you were here to share a cup
Wu De

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Jun 11th, '09, 09:34
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Re: A Daoist Tea Sage

by xuancheng » Jun 11th, '09, 09:34

Wu De wrote:This one isn't for sale. www.sagacitea.com

The calligraphy reads:

"Tea liquor is the king of all medicine
Drink old tea and open the Shadowy Portal"

(Note: here "medicine" is used in the sense Native Americans use the word)


Image
Could you fill in the missing characters, I think I'm missing two.

茶水為百藥之王喝老茶 _ _ 玄門

Where can I find reference to 玄門 in Daoist literature. I am very interested in this graph.
茶也醉人何必酒?

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Jun 11th, '09, 21:58
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thanks for taking an interest in my poetry and/or calligraph

by Wu De » Jun 11th, '09, 21:58

You are only missing one character:
過 "through"

I wrote it like that with the left side as stairs to represent the hard climb to enlightenment. I should mention a bit about my calligraphic style: At first, I spent a few years with my first two teachers learning the traditional scripts (I especially like the grass scripts). However, my current master has a different philosophy. He suggests that following traditional form is more like handwriting and that even the masters of long ago who wrote in those forms were masters because, like in tai chi or gong fu, they knew the form but bent it and transformed it beyond itself, transcending the form in other words. He often compares calligraphy to drawing portraits, saying that if you draw someone's picture in photographic realism they might as well have taken a photograph. Instead, we spend as much time learning the etymology of characters, and the many ways they have been written through time, to find the 'essence' of the word--in the same way as one drawing a portrait would look for the 'spirit' of the model. Then we learn about breathing properly and focusing Qi into the brush to capture that spirit. Funny enough, my master says that we foreigners can, in his opinion, learn to make better calligraphy because the characters are still pictures (art) to us whereas his Chinese students have to overcome their education, which has turned the symbols into mere words--the same words they think in.

The "Shadowy Portal" is the Daoist term for enlightenment. A famous saying is: "Entering the Shadowy Portal, they pass beyond the World of Dust to the realm of the immortals."
There are thousands of Daoist texts and commentaries (5400ish to be exact). If you are looking for English literature, on the other hand, Thomas Clearly has several good, though very dry, translations. Blofeld has a good overview called "Taoism, the Road to Immortality" (He also wrote the first English book on tea by the way). Alan Watts' final book "The Watercourse Way", finished after his death by a friend, is also great. From there, follow your heart and the network these books open up.

Here is a piece by my master, Wu Chung Chi (Wu Jiru). If you have access to issue one of AoT you can read more about him. Notice the tremendous difference in quality between master and student, his work and mine:

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