The Other Half of the Same Solitude
Baoputang's 独乐杯 (Dule, "solitary joy") comes in more than one inscription, each one offering a slightly different shade of what it means to drink tea alone. The first cup in the series carries 但取幽人适, the ease of a recluse. This one carries something quieter still: 心与古佛闲 — "the heart, kept idle beside an old Buddha."
Same cup, same form — built around Zhang Yuan's ranking of tea companionship from the Ming-dynasty Chalu, where drinking alone outranks every gathering that follows it. One pot pours one cup; a slightly larger pot pours two, for the rare second guest. What changes from inscription to inscription isn't the form, but the flavor of the solitude it's asking for: 幽人适 is a hermit's unhurried ease; 古佛闲 reaches further, toward the kind of stillness usually kept for temples.
Two cups, two lines pulled from two different registers of being alone — one earthbound, one closer to devotion — both arriving at the same conclusion Zhang Yuan did five hundred years ago: that company isn't what makes tea good.