The Book of Tea (Unexpurgated Start Publishing LLC)
As in the tea ceremony, the way of elegance in haiku involves highly focused attention to detail as revealed through Zen practice. This constantly attentive state, and the discipline of writing, becomes for the poet a means of self-cultivation and a source of enlightenment.
Sam Hamill • The Pocket Haiku (Shambhala Pocket Library)
both the tea ceremony and Zen share the basic philosophy that all extraneous or redundant activities should be removed and in spirit and action the whole environment should reflect economy and minimalism.
Sato,Shozo • Shodo: The Quiet Art of Japanese Zen Calligraphy, Learn the Wisdom of Zen Through Traditional Brush Painting
Good in the Beginning springs from the awareness that we and all sentient beings fundamentally have the buddha nature as our innermost essence, and that to realize it is to be free of ignorance and to put an end, finally, to suffering.
Sogyal Rinpoche • The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying: The Spiritual Classic & International Bestseller: Revised and Updated Edition
As Rikyu said, “The tea ceremony is no more than boiling water, steeping tea, and drinking it.”
Andrew Juniper • Wabi Sabi: The Japanese Art of Impermanence
My Tea Ceremony
Oh, you bowls, don’t tell the others I drink
my liquor out of you. I want a feeling of beauty
to surround the plainest facts of my life.
Sitting on my bare heels, making a formal bow,
I want an atmosphere of gentleness to drive
out the squalor of everyday existence
in a little passive house surrounded
by black rocks and gray gravel.
H
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