Tea is nought but this: first you heat the water, then you make the tea. Then you drink it properly. That is all you need to know.
Interpretation
Making tea symbolizes the simplicity and mindfulness of everyday actions.
This quote emphasizes the importance of simplicity and mindfulness in daily rituals, suggesting that the essential elements of making tea can serve as a metaphor for approaching life with focus and intention. By highlighting the straightforward tasks—heating water, making tea, and drinking it properly—Sen No Rikyu encourages us to appreciate the present moment and find fulfillment in the simple acts we often take for granted.
In practice
A mindfulness workshop highlighting the importance of simple daily rituals.
For a time it seemed inevitable that the surging tide of agnosticism and materialism would sweep all before it. There were those who did not dare utter what they thought. Many thought the case hopeless and the cause of religion lost once and for ever. But the tide has turned and to the rescue has come - what? The study of comparative religions. By the study of different religions we find that in essence they are one.
All things are inconstant except the faith in the soul, which changes all things and fills their inconstancy with light.
History does not repeat itself. Nor does it unfold in cycles. The real future is contingent, rich beyond imagining, a perennial gobsmack, tragic and glorious in equal measure; the pundits' future, spun of 'conventional wisdom,' is only a sucker punch to that common-sense fact.
This is the reality of nuclear weapons: they may trigger a world war; a war which, unlike previous ones, destroys all of civilization.
Christian worship is the most momentous, most urgent, most glorious action that can take place in human life.
Sometimes the shadow stays next to the Light. Sometimes it disappears into the Light
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