Yes, the world may aspire to vacuousness, lost souls mourn beauty, insignificance surrounds us. Then let us drink a cup of tea. Silence descends, one hears the wind outside, autumn leaves rustle and take flight, the cat sleeps in a warm pool of light. And, with each swallow, time is sublimed.
Interpretation
In the midst of a chaotic world, finding solace in simple moments can elevate our experience of time and beauty.
This quote by Muriel Barbery reflects on the contrast between the superficial pursuits of the world and the deep, peaceful moments found in nature and simplicity. It suggests that while society may be filled with emptiness and sorrow, one can find profound beauty in quiet moments, such as drinking tea and being attuned to the natural world. These small experiences allow us to transcend the noise around us and appreciate life more fully.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a meditation retreat to emphasize the importance of finding peace in small moments.
But many intelligent people have a sort of bug: they think intelligence is an end in itself. They have one idea in mind: to be intelligent, which is really stupid. And when intelligence takes itself for its own goal, it operates very strangely: the proof that it exists is not to be found in the ingenuity or simplicity of what it produces, but in how obscurely it is expressed.
Sashimi is velvet dust, verging on silk, or a bit of both, and the extraordinary alchemy of its gossamer essence allows it to preserve a milky density unknown even by clouds.... my cheeks recalled the effects of its profound caress.
If, in our world, there is any chance of becoming the person you haven't yet become...will I know how to seize that chance, turn my life into a garden that will be completely different from my forebears'?
Because beauty consists of its own passing, just as we reach for it. It's the ephemeral configuration of things in the moment, when you can see both their beauty and their death.
There's so much humanity in a love of trees, so much nostalgia for our first sense of wonder, so much power in just feeling our own insignificance when we are surrounded by nature...yes, that's it: just thinking about trees and their indifferent majesty and our love for them teaches us how ridiculous we are - vile parasites squirming on the surface of the earth - and at the same time how deserving of life we can be, when we can honor this beauty that owes us nothing.
We musn't forget old people with their rotten bodies, old people who are so close to death, something that young people don't want to think about. We musn't forget that our bodies decline, friends die, everyone forgets about us, and the end is solitude. Nor must we forget that these old people were young once, that a lifespan is pathetically short, that one day you're twenty and the next day you're eighty.
What sort of philosophers are we, who know absolutely nothing of the origin and destiny of cats?
Nothing can so pierce the soul as the uttermost sigh of the body.
Take it that you have died today, and your life's story is ended; and henceforward regard what future time may be given you as uncovenanted surplus, and live it out in harmony with nature.
What we call doubt is often simply dullness of mind and spirit, not the absence of faith at all, but faith latent with the lives we are not quite living, God dormant in the world to which we are not quite giving our best selves.
Do not think me mad. It is not to make money that I believe a Christian should live. The noblest thing a man can do is, just humbly to receive, and then go amongst others and give.
Desire demands only a constant attention to the unknown gravitational field which surrounds us and from which we can recharge ourselves every moment, as if breathing from the atmosphere of possibility itself. A life’s work is not a series of stepping-stones onto which we calmly place our feet, but more like an ocean crossing where there is no path, only a heading, a direction, which, of itself, is in conversation with the elements.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.