Mountain Tea

In an attempt to assuage our collective anxiety during the coronavirus pandemic, artist A K Mimi Allin is performing a 4-month walking meditation (64 marathons), pacing a 50-mile trail between Mt Wantastiquet (1,335’) and Mt Monadnock (3,165’) with the I Ching (Book of Changes) and a ceremonial tea bowl. Monadnock, pictured above, is a prominent isolated peak in southern New Hampshire, purportedly the 2nd most climbed mountain in the world after Fuji. The I Ching is an ancient Chinese divinatory system, considered a physics of time. Tea ceremony is about harmony, respect, tranquility. Mountain Tea is about stepping into rhythm with time, even as COVID-19 is shifting our experience of it. If we can follow the waveform of this epoch, heighten our awareness of it and of our mortality, perhaps we can realize the way to a better world from the one that is falling apart. A tea ceremony will be performed at sunrise and one hexagram observed each day, in order, from 1-64. This work is inspired by the Marathon Monks of Mt Hiei in Japan who walk a full marathon every day for 7 years to achieve enlightenment and by the health workers fighting this epidemic. The artist dedicates 100% of the karma earned from this practice to those in harm’s way and those the virus has claimed.

THROW THE COINS
Your participation is desired in this meditation practice for personal and global purification. Brew a cup of green tea, make a deep bow to the tea and to yourself, breathe deeply, compose a question about your health in relation to the health of the planet, write it down, throw 3 coins a total of 6 times (any kind of coin), record the number of heads and tails from each throw separately, mail the reading and question to: mimiallin@gmail.com. I will carry your reading and respond in writing from the trail. Donations invited, but not required. May all beings without exception be released from suffering.