Morning Meditation Ritual

One of the important elements that I have discovered about morning meditation is that I must first make tea. Not coffee and not orange juice, but a proper cup of Irish tea. I prefer Barry’s Tea - steeped 5 minutes with milk. Not too much milk, mind you, or it is ruined. When the milk is added, the tea should be the color of golden straw.

Sometimes when I rise at a moderate time, say 5:30 am, I find I am in too much of a hurry to heat the cup before I make the tea. This is a mistake. So I find, as tortuous as it sounds, that getting up at 4:45 in the morning allows me the right amount of time to make a perfect cup of tea, slowly wake up and have ample time for my meditation.

Madness, some of my friends say. So what. At this hour the household is still asleep and no one will come into my space. No persons, animals, beeping, buzzing, knocking or leaf blowers (doesn’t anybody have a broom or a rake anymore!) Even the garbage trucks have not started banging around at that hour. Sometimes the cat wanders downstairs and in the deep silence of the house I can hear her crunching her dry chow.

Now the cup is heated, the tea is brewed, milk to the color of straw and I bring my hot cup of tea and go to my office where there is a blanket waiting in my meditation chair.

When I meditate in the afternoon, with tea as always, I have to fidget a bit before I get settled. The last conversation, the next conversation both linger. Did I turn off the ringer? Am I expecting a delivery? And so on for a while.

But in the early dark morning there is nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing to turn off and I immediately go to the place of trance. OK, it’s a little bit like going back to sleep for the first few minutes. But once that steaming hot tea hits my gullet, I am awake and ready.