LIVING TEA SEASONAL TEA CLUB

SUMMER FIRE - 2026

Zhuangzi was a Taoist philosopher of ancient China whose writings, full of paradox, humor, and insight, remain among the most alive spiritual teachings ever set down. In the Second Book of the Tao, he offers us this:

Zhuangzi dreamed he was a butterfly, fluttering about, at ease, enjoying itself. He did not know he was Zhuangzi. Then he awoke, solid and unmistakable, and found himself wondering: was he Zhuangzi who had dreamed of being a butterfly, or a butterfly now dreaming he was Zhuangzi? He did not rush to answer. He rested in the not-knowing, and in that resting, something remained whole.

In a sense, this is a story about fire as the quiet light of consciousness that can remain present, open, and at ease even in uncertainty. It is this quality of fire that we wish to explore together as we move through the ninth year of the Seasonal Tea Club.

I want to begin personally this year, because the fire element has been teaching me something close to home. Living Tea is entering an exciting and demanding chapter this summer as we raise funds to build the next evolution of the company. With that has come long hours, stretched energy, and the particular kind of depletion that comes from burning the candle at both ends. In Chinese medicine, this is understood with elegant precision: excessive fire draws from the water element, consuming kidney jing, the deep reserves that sustain us. I've felt it as a quieting of joy, and reflecting on that quieting has been instructive. When our days become weighted toward optimization, transaction, and outcome, as so many business-oriented seasons of life inevitably are, we lose access to something essential: the simple, nourishing joy of connecting without agenda. Of being present with another person, or with a cup of tea, without needing to get something out of it. This imbalance is not only personal. We live in a cultural moment that increasingly measures relationships by their utility and rewards productivity over presence. It is precisely in seasons like this that the fire element calls us back to what actually sustains us.

This season's tea club draws directly from insights that emerged during a course I taught called The Golden Mirror: Relationships as a Path of Awakening, available along with elemental meditations on the Living Tea YouTube page. In exploring the fire element through the lens of relationship, I found that the most profound fire teachings are not grand or dramatic. They are quietly radical: the power of genuine presence, the wisdom of propriety, the reflection that our choices offer us, and the discovery that true intimacy is not something we create but something we reveal. These are the themes we will explore together through four remarkable teas, moving from the depth of late spring into the luminous heart of summer.

Fire is the element of connection, vulnerability, and joy. It is the spark that animates life, the quality of communication that allows us to be truly heard and to truly hear another. It is what energizes us through the steady, warm radiance of a heart that is genuinely, quietly alive. Joy, it turns out, is not something we need to optimize for or extract from each moment. It is our natural state when we are present and in balance. We simply have to create room for it, space in our lives for being without always becoming, for connecting in a space of open presence. May this summer be that invitation.

THE HEART THAT WANTS TO BE MET

Paired with Summer Bloom - Organic Qimen Red Tea

In the five element system, the Heart is understood as the sovereign, the seat of consciousness, awareness, and the animating intelligence that gives life its meaning. The shen, which resides in the Heart, is a living presence that we can sense in ourselves when connected to the dimension of stillness within. It is visible in the quality of a person's eyes, audible in the warmth of their voice, felt in whether someone is truly with you or only appearing to be. Shen is the light of fire, and like all light, it reveals what is present and what is hidden.

Healthy shen radiates as a quality of quiet aliveness, the unmistakable sense of someone who is genuinely here. When the shen is coherent, actions match values. Words carry the same warmth as the feelings behind them. Somebody with a clear shen can sense that same coherence in another, or when it is absence, they will notice the scattered energy of somebody whose shen is disturbed. The shen and fire element at their most essential are warm, clear and felt.  

The Heart, in Chinese medicine, governs speech. Remarkably, the tongue grows embryologically out of the heart muscle itself. It is, quite literally, the heart reaching outward into the world. This means that our choice of words, what we say and how we say it, is a direct reflection of the state of our heart. Excess fire shows up as manic communication, compulsive talking, or words that overpower and leave little room. Depleted fire shows up as an inability to communicate our feelings openly, a kind of interior silence that others sense even when they cannot name it. Speech is fire made audible. And fire, at its deepest, does not want to speak so much as it wants to be felt. It wants to be met.

This is the invitation of the fire season: to allow yourself to be genuinely present, to risk true, vulnerable connection with others. Summer Bloom in your cup carries that quality, rich, warm, and rooted, with a depth that lingers. Sourced from Anhui province, this smooth, non-astringent red tea opens with a bright ruby liquor and a bouquet that is more melon and rose than the caramel of a typical Qimen. Think watermelon meeting cantaloupe meeting vanilla, with a dash of stone fruit underneath. It's a yummy, accessible, generous tea that makes you feel happy. Brew it gongfu style with 3 to 5 grams at 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Sit with it. Notice what it feels like to simply be here, with no agenda, open to whatever arises.

Questions to sit with: Where in my life am I performing warmth rather than feeling it? Which relationships bring genuine warmth to my life, and how do I tend to that fire? Which relationships deplete me, and what is actually lacking in them? How might I tend to those relationships with more honesty and care?

PROPRIETY — THE ART OF KNOWING WHEN

Paired with Wild Orchid — Yiwu Mountain Loose Leaf Raw Sheng Puerh 1995

Propriety is one of the most misunderstood virtues in the Taoist tradition. We tend to hear it as a word of restriction, proper behavior, correct conduct, social decorum. But the Chinese understanding of li, the propriety of the Heart, is something more alive than that. Propriety means self-possession. It means self-awareness and the ability to choose moment by moment what the appropriate, wholesome action is, which can be translated as wisdom or insight. When we are self-possessed, we are connected to being instead of constant mechanical doing. Beingness is aliveness, consciousness and love. The deepest expression of the heart, the home of fire in a human, is presence unto and with another.

Think of a fire that knows how to burn. When a fire is too contained it produces no warmth, and when it becomes a wild conflagration, it turns destructive. There is a wisdom in healthy fire that is spontaneous and attuned, a responsiveness to what the moment actually calls for. This is propriety: the spontaneity of appropriateness. It arises from presence and awareness.

In relationships, propriety is the quality that allows us to be close without losing ourselves, to be generous without becoming depleted, and to be open without being boundaryless. It is what allows the Heart to give and receive love in recognition of oneness while remaining whole and independent. When propriety is absent, we either armor ourselves against intimacy or collapse into it. We either withhold when openness is called for, or we overshare when what is needed is quiet witnessing. The living intelligence of the heart is knowing spontaneously what the moment calls for, which asks for and provides deeper presence.

Wild Orchid has had thirty years to find its propriety. Sourced from the ancient tea forests of Yiwu Mountain in Yunnan, this loose-leaf raw sheng carries the particular dignity of a tea that has aged without hurry. What greets you in the cup is clean and herbaceous, evoking a green forest teeming with life, pure spring water and gentle herbs, woodsy and smooth with a quiet orchid note. The sweetness characteristic of Yiwu teas is present but understated. This is not a tea that announces itself through honey floral richness or sugarcane sweetness. What makes Wild Orchid shine is its qi, which is remarkable. It settles you. It mellows the nervous system and brings you into a kind of easeful presence that is, not coincidentally, exactly what propriety asks of us. Without the bitter astringency found in many mid-aged sheng puerhs, it is an ideal summer companion. Brew it gongfu style with 3 to 5 grams at 210 degrees Fahrenheit and allow it to open gradually across multiple infusions. What remains, steep after steep, is precisely what needs to remain. It is a tea that knows itself. As you drink it, you might ask the same of yourself: not what the rules say, but what your heart, at its most settled, already knows.

Questions to sit with: In my closest relationships, do I tend toward over-opening or over-protecting? What does that cost me? Can I identify a moment when I acted from genuine inner knowing rather than habit or fear? What did that feel like?

THE POWER OF CHOICE — WHAT YOUR SHEN REFLECTS

Paired with Dreamtime - Wild Tree Oolong, Shenkeng, New Taipei City Area, Taiwan 2023

There is a teaching in the Taoist tradition that is both simple and subtly demanding: the health of the shen is reflected in the quality of our choices. Not our grand, life-altering decisions, but the ordinary choices we make moment to moment. What we give our attention to, how we speak to those we love, whether we act from our values or from our wounds.

When the shen is settled and coherent, we naturally tend toward what is wholesome. Morality and ethics require effort, while virtue is simply an expression of coherence. The heart that is genuinely at ease does not need to be argued into kindness or integrity. It moves toward what is true and nourishing the way a plant moves toward light. Conversely, when the shen is disturbed, scattered by overstimulation, clouded by unresolved emotion or passion or anxiety, or exhausted by depletion, our choices begin to reflect that disturbance. We reach for intensity instead of depth, for distraction instead of presence, for the familiar comfort of the past instead of the creative possibility of now.

During the Golden Mirror course, this teaching landed with particular force. The fire element invites us to understand ourselves as the source of our own volition, as opposed to victims of our circumstances. We can in fact change the past by changing the way we related to what has happened to us. There is a difference between self-blame and self-respect. To recognize that I am the one who chooses how I meet this moment, that all dysfunction I carry is mine to address, and that I have the power, right now, to cease creating what I do not wish to perpetuate - this is self-respect. This is what it means to reclaim the fire. Not through force of will, but through the clarity of a heart that has decided to be honest. There are no enlightened beings, only enlightened actions.

Dreamtime lives between worlds, and so does this tea. Fresh, heady, and opulent, it is among the finest oolongs I've encountered in the last couple of years. The trees are old and wild, growing in Shenkeng in the New Taipei City area, producing a small, precious quantity each year. While most northern Taiwanese oolongs are striped in the tradition of their Fujian ancestors, Dreamtime is processed as a balled oolong, most likely from the Si Ji Chun varietal, a hearty cultivar that yields a strong, incredibly patient brew. A mid-roast balanced by a generous floral opening, it offers flavors of green stems, creamy rose, and blooming lilac that linger throughout the mouth between steepings. It's such a pleasant sensory experience that it transports you to another world, which is exactly how it earned its name. As we move into the warmer months, this is a tea worth returning to again and again. Brew it gongfu or bowl tea style with water around 190 degrees Fahrenheit and let it unfold at its own pace. Like the shen it accompanies, it rewards patience and presence over urgency.

Questions to sit with: What do my choices over the past month reflect about the current state of my shen? Where am I waiting for circumstances to change rather than choosing differently myself? Where do addictions to stimulation get in the way of presence?

PRESENCE OVER INTENSITY — FIRE'S TRUE MEDITATION

Paired with Song of the Grass Hut - Song Luo Mountain Green Tea, Anhui, China 2025

We return, at the height of summer, to Zhuangzi and his butterfly. What makes that story so enduring is not its philosophical cleverness but its emotional quality. There is no anxiety in it. No urgency to resolve the paradox, no scrambling to stabilize identity. Zhuangzi wakes from the dream and simply wonders, openly, easily, without distress. He is as present in the wondering as the butterfly was in its flight. This is healthy shen. 

We live in a culture that has confused intensity with aliveness. We seek experiences that are maximally stimulating, relationships that feel electric, emotions that confirm we are feeling something. And yet the fire element points us toward something quieter and more sustaining. True intimacy is a quality of presence, the willingness to be with another person fully, to be seen, to stay when staying feels uncomfortable, and to open when opening feels risky. It is among the most vulnerable things a human being can do, and it is also the most nourishing. This is where fire finds its deepest expression: in the courage to remain present rather than to escalate, to soften rather than to perform, to let genuine warmth do what intensity never could.

Intimacy, in the deepest fire element teaching, reveals the underlying union between people. The sense of separation we carry is the very thing that genuine presence dissolves. This is why the shen, when it is truly settled, experiences all of life as intimate: the weather, the breath, the quality of light on water, the person sitting across the table for tea. When the shen is coherent, even not-knowing feels like closeness.

This is fire's true meditation: a quality of attention cultivated through returning, again and again, to what is already here. The steady hearth at the heart of human life. The willingness to already be connected and to let that be enough. Song of the Grass Hut is one of the oldest styles of green tea in the Chinese tradition, originating in the Ming Dynasty and long held in high regard for a complexity of flavor considered superior to lighter green teas. The tiny dark green leaves, curled into loose balls, unfurl beautifully in the cup, releasing oils that give the brew a thick, brothy body with a smooth and refreshing finish. The flavor profile is layered and surprising with sweet greens, juicy vegetal umami, castelvetrano olive, lightly floral sandalwood, and fresh cut grass. It expresses a lot of flavor for a green tea across many steepings and is perfectly suited to hotter days when you want something full and alive without being heavy. Best brewed gongfu with short steepings at 180 degrees Fahrenheit. We felt we simply had to share it during the summer months. 

As you explore the fire element this summer, let it be warm, sincere and shining rather than consuming, urgent, intense and burning. Look for the joy of mundane moments and the simple beauty all around you. 

A CLOSING NOTE

As we move through the ninth year of the tea club, we want to express our deepest gratitude to each of you who has joined us on this journey. Your willingness to explore the elements as living realities, to sit quietly with a cup of tea and allow it to be a genuine practice, is exactly the kind of presence this work is about. Every time you settle into a session and let the tea do its quiet work, you are participating in something that matters. We are honored to share this path with you.

As a member of the Seasonal Tea Club, please enjoy 15% off your next order with the code FIRE. We hope the teas in this collection bring warmth, clarity, and a little luminous ease to your summer days.

Finally, for those of you who feel a deeper resonance with what Living Tea is building, we want you to know that we are entering an exciting new chapter. We are currently inviting people who share our vision to become more intimately part of what we are creating. If you are curious about this investment opportunity and what it means to invest in the next evolution of Living Tea, we would love to hear from you. Please reach out to us directly and we will share more. Thank you friends. 

With warmth and gratitude, The Living Tea Team