The Tea Letter #7 (Aim, Art, Dharma)
Most of the ordinary people whom I have studied, when first confronted with the notion of dharma, imagined that for them to claim their dharma probably meant inventing an entirely new life…Not so. As it turns out, most people are already living very close to their dharma. Really. Within spitting range.
What is the problem, then? These same people, close as they are to the deepest mystery of dharma, know very little about it. They don’t name it. They don’t own it. They don’t live it intentionally. Their own sacred calling is hiding in plain sight. They keep just missing it. And, as we will see, when it comes to dharma, missing by an inch is as good as missing by a mile. Aim is everything.
- Cope, Stephen. The Great Work of Your Life (p. xxvi).
Growing up I knew I was good at three things: guitar, creative writing, and foreign language. I wasn’t encouraged to pursue the first two with any sort of professional seriousness and the third didn’t make for a career on its own.
By the time I was 17 and needed to think about college admissions and majors, I had no clue what it was I was “supposed” to be doing. I scored far below my aptitude on the ACT (I should have taken the SAT to begin with) and wound up at a middling state school, where I wandered aimlessly until I finished with a Liberal Arts degree that pointed me in no particular direction.
My final year of college I spent studying abroad in China—a $20,000 student loan gamble—provided a foundation for some kind of career path in international marketing for multi-national corporations interested in the Chinese market. Connecting myself to China felt like the best idea I had and I’d get to use my foreign language skills. However, I abandoned that path within four years of graduation—China wasn’t for me, after all.
I moved to Japan for a brief time to consider my next move. That’s where I decided to move to Silicon Valley and join tech.
I arrived on January 3, 2015. After three months’ intensive training and one failed attempt at an early stage startup, I landed at Discord–a career defining opportunity and a true make or break moment. I worked my ass off at that job and experienced true success until I burnt out a little over three years later.
By early 2019, I had “made it” in my career but the cost was significant–my mental and physical health had deteriorated to levels I’d never experienced in my life. Badly damaged and in desperate need of rest, I sought healing. I found shadow work.
My path into the shadow revealed to me a simple truth: I never should have stopped doing what gave me life in my youth. In November of 2020, I posted this tweet:
It shows I was beginning to grasp at the threads of a tapestry I started weaving as a boy. Then, last year, I began to pull.
In my last newsletter on ConvertKit before launching this Substack publication, I wrote:
I’ve been writing The Tea Letter since February 2017. For the last 5 years, the project has been lodged firmly in “hobby” status. That is, I write it when I have spare time and energy to get to it. However, last year I started wondering whether I might want to take my writing more seriously.
It wasn’t the first time I’d asked myself the question, but this time felt different. I felt a calling–from Spirit, you might even say–so I decided to explore. I invested heavily both in dollars and time to develop my craft and confidence as a writer. Through this, I learned my writing isn’t just a hobby–it’s who I am.
I am a writer. I must write.
It took me 36 years to be able to write that last sentence–a full 18 years after I decided to give up on myself. One life lived in the innocent truth of childhood, another in the self-deception of adulthood.
Aim. Be careful what you aim at–your life depends on it.
Tea of the Week: Single Cultivar Saemidori, by Kaneta Ota
This tea is one of three special teas I purchased from Yunomi as my shincha (新茶, lit. “new/fresh tea”) order of spring tea from Japan. Ota-san is a legend of a tea producer and Ian was able to secure only one kilogram of each of his micro batch teas this year (he only makes 5kg of these teas in total). I bought 50 grams of each, and this is the first.
To say it’s a work of art is an understatement.
You can tell how good the tea is in a few ways:
Uniform needle-shaped leaves with little to no broken pieces
A deep, alluring green color and glossy sheen on the surface of the leaves
Powerful aroma on the dry leaves alone, before any hot water is added
I don’t often go in on these sorts of teas, but it felt like a fun opportunity to get something good I hadn’t had before. I’m still working through my impressions of this tea and may try a tea review writeup, which I haven’t done in a while, when I feel ready.
Recent Readings:
The Great Work of Your Life - Stephen Cope
I’ll admit it: I wouldn’t have read this book if it hadn’t been recommended to me by my friend Paul Millerd. I’ve now recommended it to probably half a dozen people by now and I’m considering keeping copies of it on hand to give out as gifts.
This book is about dharma, in this case defined as one’s “sacred vocation” and elucidated through a combination of the Bhagavad Ghita and real life examples. Despite the cover, this is no “follow your passion”, feel-good self help book. Dharma is not New Age fluff—it’s a millennia-old (believed to be written in the 1st or 2nd Century BCE) path to awakening what already lies within and living it to the fullest extent. It’s a path to living life in advance, not retreat—to action. It’s something that can save you or destroy you.
Ignore it at your own peril.
When the Money’s Just Too Damn Good - Nat Eliason
Looking at Nat from the outside, I had no idea he dreamt of being a writer who left a mark on the world through his writing. My first introduction to him was through his work on SEO (and his interest in tea).
Now that he has shared this, I see in him a kindred spirit that inspires me to expand my piece on aim—something I had planned before his post—into something much more.
In the meantime, I encourage you to check out Nat’s piece (and subscribe to his Substack). I think you’ll see the same themes I discuss here in his work.
Until next time, happy drinking.
Mike
(Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash)