Jars

(Small jar from Ming dynasty, a present from my tea master. The tea in this jar is worth a lot more than the jar.)

For 3 years I spent most of my Sundays at the tea shop. The weekly Sunday Farmer's market is held in the parking lot, sneaking a 10 minutes walk through the market was a leisure out of a day of work.

The past Sunday, a few friends and I was in the LB marina for lunch. At the marina parking lot is the 2nd street Sunday's farmer's market, a craft market has been added since the last time I was there which was at least 3 years ago.

A pottery stand caught my eyes, jars! Why do women like jars? Is it because we stay in the kitchen so much? Is it because we like neatness? Is it because we like orderly ingredients? Whatever the reason is, I love jars! Use to buy them at the 99 cents stores, glass jars, ceramic jars...

Moving into my tea drinking days, jars are more than keeping things in order, they are part of the decoration, it then turned into favoritism, as more jars are accumulated over the years, only good teas deserve the best jars. Unfair eh!

What's the relation between a jar and what it contains? I had not thought of that ever. Buddhism talks about reincarnation, every living matter on earth are reincarnated from previous lives. I love discovery channel and National Geo, a show about earth without human had a preview of what earth mater will become other than human. Concrete towers will become a pile of dirt in a few hundred years. By the same theory, a ceramic jar will return to its original form - a pile of dirt in x amount of time. Is this reincarnation? I think perhaps it is in transition of reincarnation.

A ceramic jar holds tea in this life, when it become dirt again surrounding roots of a tea tree, this jar will be part of the tree, giving the tree nutrients and minerals. This jar is now a living plant, tea is its physical form, kept in another jar. Spent tea leaves are put back into earth, decomposed into soil as part of the dirt, a pot maker one day decided to make a jar out of this part of the soil. Time, space, matter.... We are some what the same as law of nature....