My Own 'Tea Ceremony'
Feb. 17th, 2011 07:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cedar_groveFrom The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.
If we stop to truly consider it, making tea is a miraculous process. First, small leaves are gathered from plants that grow from unseen roots. Then boiling water is drained through the dried leaves. Finally, allowing the mixture to steep creates an elixir that, when digested, can be healing.
The whole process is a model for how to make inner use of our daily experience. For isn't making tea the way we cipher through the events of our lives? Isn't the work of sincerity to pour our deepest attention over the dried bits of our days? Isn't patience the need to let the mixture of inner and outer brew until the lessons are fragrant and soothing on the throat? Isn't it the heat of our sincerity that steams the lessons out of living? Isn't it the heat of those lessons that makes us sip them slowly?
Yet perhaps the most revealing thing about all this is that none of these elements alone can produce tea. Likewise, only by using them together, can we make tea of our days and our sincerity and our patience. And none of it is healing without a willingness to drink from the tea of life.
I used to do this all the time... Conscious living... focussing on the process to internalise the thoughts and feelings, the meaning - even in something as simple as making a cup of tea. People used to find it strange at first, for example, when sharing a meal with me, that I would rarely talk and eat at the same time. I'm not talking about the whole 'don't eat with your mouth full' thing. I mean that, if I was eating, I would be quiet and think about what I was putting in to my mouth, into my body, and while talking I would set down my utensils, and give my full attention to the conversation.
Similarly in other things - walking in the fresh air... showering... anything I was doing, focus, internalise, understand... It was also something I demanded of my students (My wiccan ones, not the little ones that I teach).
I don't know when I stopped. I don't think I did all the time, but sadly far too often I succumb to the pressures of the fast paced life we all live in. The thoughts here, these thoughts for the day, have brought this back to my awareness, and rekindled the need to do this again.
Perhaps it's time for a cup of tea.
Given sincerity, there will be enlightenment.
-The Doctrine of the Mean, 200BCE
If we stop to truly consider it, making tea is a miraculous process. First, small leaves are gathered from plants that grow from unseen roots. Then boiling water is drained through the dried leaves. Finally, allowing the mixture to steep creates an elixir that, when digested, can be healing.
The whole process is a model for how to make inner use of our daily experience. For isn't making tea the way we cipher through the events of our lives? Isn't the work of sincerity to pour our deepest attention over the dried bits of our days? Isn't patience the need to let the mixture of inner and outer brew until the lessons are fragrant and soothing on the throat? Isn't it the heat of our sincerity that steams the lessons out of living? Isn't it the heat of those lessons that makes us sip them slowly?
Yet perhaps the most revealing thing about all this is that none of these elements alone can produce tea. Likewise, only by using them together, can we make tea of our days and our sincerity and our patience. And none of it is healing without a willingness to drink from the tea of life.
I used to do this all the time... Conscious living... focussing on the process to internalise the thoughts and feelings, the meaning - even in something as simple as making a cup of tea. People used to find it strange at first, for example, when sharing a meal with me, that I would rarely talk and eat at the same time. I'm not talking about the whole 'don't eat with your mouth full' thing. I mean that, if I was eating, I would be quiet and think about what I was putting in to my mouth, into my body, and while talking I would set down my utensils, and give my full attention to the conversation.
Similarly in other things - walking in the fresh air... showering... anything I was doing, focus, internalise, understand... It was also something I demanded of my students (My wiccan ones, not the little ones that I teach).
I don't know when I stopped. I don't think I did all the time, but sadly far too often I succumb to the pressures of the fast paced life we all live in. The thoughts here, these thoughts for the day, have brought this back to my awareness, and rekindled the need to do this again.
Perhaps it's time for a cup of tea.
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no subject
Date: 2011-03-27 08:10 pm (UTC)Of course, on the other hand, there are all the times you say that my taking forever to brush my teeth drives you nuts... :)
no subject
Date: 2011-03-27 08:20 pm (UTC)