Tea has been a medium for Buddhist monks in the practice of Zen meditation since the Jin Dynasty. Master Zhizhe set up Tiantai Sect, the first Buddhist sect in China, during the Sui Dynasty, and Tiantai tea is closely related to Zen meditation of Tiantai Sect. “Jue” (Enlightenment) is the spirit of common taste in tea and Zen of Tiantai Sect to develop the ben jue (the original enlightenment)of six roots through tea serving and tea tasting that has great influence on Zen and Japanese Sadō (the Japanese tea ceremony). The common taste in tea and Zen of Tiantai Sect takes “nothingness” as the core, while Japanese Sadō involves its own aesthetic, “wabi” (rustic simplicity). By referring to contents from ten chapters of Minor Zhi-Guan (The Minor Treatise on Samatha and Vipassana, i.e. calm meditation and insight meditation), this essay interprets tea serving and tea tasting. This research further discusses an attempt to construct the theory of “Tiantai Tea Zen” to establish “Tiantai Tea Zen 18” based on the inheritance and change of the tea offering art of “Dragon Line 18”. It thus leads masters of the tea ceremony to a step toward the way of shi jue (the initial enlightenment) from the practice of tea serving and, finally, to a practice of tea in possessing self-enlightenment, enlightening others and achieving the realm of complete enlightenment. Therefore, the so-called masters of the tea ceremony are really the enlightened who have attained adhigama (spiritual realization) of self-nature that is originally clear and pure, i.e. the Buddha’s way
