Besides being a lawyer and a wine columnist, I also teach meditation at a Korean Zen Buddhist temple. The combination of Buddhism and wine strikes some of my friends as strange – and perhaps it should. For 2500 years, one of the basic vows of a Buddhist practitioner is to avoid intoxicants. The Buddha taught that drinking is a distraction. It clouds the mind, whereas the central goal of meditation is to live in a clear and calm awareness of the present moment.
When I was about to be ordained as a Dharma Teacher, my Zen Master informed me I had to take this vow. Coughing and trying to appear casual, I asked whether this meant no more alcohol for the rest of my life. He sighed enigmatically and said, “Sometimes your vows open and sometimes they close, but don’t ask me when they open or close.” This is typical of his teaching: living in the present moment means that you can’t cling obsessively to rules or else they become just another distraction on the path to enlightenment. And in fact, since that time, the Zen Master and I have shared more than one kettle of soju (a traditional Korean rice vodka that goes down like a cardiac infarction).
Some modern Buddhists (especially in the Shambhala school) believe that a little bit of drunkeness can alter your consciousness and be a tool for meditative awareness, thus justifying a relaxation of the traditional rule against inebriation. While I enjoy drinking, I can’t buy this argument since I’ve never seen anyone act more Buddha-like after knocking a few back (including myself).
But I learned something from drinking that soju with my teacher. Contrary to both traditional Buddhists and more innovative ones, I don’t view alcohol as a medicine to induce enlightenment or poison to inhibit it. The point isn’t what alcohol does with you, but what you do with it.
For me, tasting wine is like flower arranging, tea ceremony or calligraphy. Approached the right way, it is a Zen art form providing an opportunity to slow down our busy minds and appreciate life with calmness and clarity.
The beauty of good wine is that it is so complex and refined that the only way to fully experience it is to stop talking and stop thinking. We simply experience the present moment as the flavours wash over our tongue and then linger in the mouth in a long, dying finish. Arriving in the present moment in this way and being aware of every sensation is precisely what meditation is all about. Wine tasting is a form of Zen.
The advantage of the Zen art of wine tasting is that anyone can try it. All it takes is a decent bottle, like the fragrant and spicy 2005 Goats do Roam in Villages that I had last night (LCBO #718940, $13.85). The disadvantage is that if you pursue this method with too much enthusiasm, not only will enlightenment elude you, but you will wind up with a hangover.
Matthew Sullivan is a civil litigator in Toronto. He writes a weekly blog entry here on lawandstyle.ca. The Short Cellar column appears in the print edition of Precedent. Matthew can be reached at matthew@lawandstyle.beta-site.ca