Tea (Cha)Daoist
Studies and Practices
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Tea (Cha)Daoist
Studies and Practices
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Tea (Cha)
Tea, Tea Drinking, Tea Ceremony, Daoist Tea Drinking
Quotations
Tea, Tea Drinking, Tea Ceremony, Daoist Tea Drinking
"Drink your tea slowly and
reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves - slowly,
evenly, without rushing toward the future."
- Thich Nat Hahn
"To truly drink tea, in fact to really
interact with any aspect of life, requires the individual to cleanse oneself,
both internally and externally, and still one's mind/heart. To still one's
mind/heart, however, does not mean to change one's environment or to run away
from the challenges of life. You cannot still your mind/heart by simply changing
your circumstances. To still your mind/heart you must practice sitting in
forgetfulness (Zuowang). To still one's mind/heart is
to forget the self-imposed and society imposed restrictions and judgments that
fragment us from the process of Tao. It is to forget the superficiality, the
fragrance which pollutes the mind/heart and drives its desires. When we are no
longer fragmented, polluted and driven by contrived desires, heaven, earth and
people are united into one process. At this point, we are sincerely interacting
through all of our senses and mind with our environment and the people who
populate it. This interaction is a continual process known as Tao."
- Robert Santee, A Taoist Tea Ceremony
Tea is drunk to forget the din of
the world.
- T'ien Yiheng
There is a great deal of poetry and
fine sentiment in a chest of tea.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Letters and Social Aims
If you are cold, tea will warm
you. If you are too heated, it will cool you. If you are depressed, it will
cheer you. If you are excited, it will calm you.
- Gladstone, 1865
We had a kettle; we let it leak:
Our not repairing made it worse.
We haven't had any tea for a week...
The bottom is out of the Universe.
- Rudyard Kipling
Tea should be taken in solitude.
- C.S. Lewis
If man has no tea in him, he is
incapable of understanding truth and beauty.
- Japanese Proverb
Tea is liquid wisdom.
- Anonymous
Find yourself a cup of tea; the
teapot is behind you. Now tell me about hundreds of things.
- Saki
Tea...is
a religion of the art of life.
- Okakura
"The first cup moistens my lips and
throat. The second cup breaks my loneliness. The third cup searches my barren
entrails but to find therein some thousand volumes of odd ideographs. The
fourth cup raises a slight perspiration - all the wrongs of life pass out
through my pores. At the fifth cup I am purified. The sixth cup calls me to
the realms of the immortals. The seventh cup - ah, but I could take no more! I
only feel the breath of the cool wind that raises in my sleeves. Where is
Elysium? Let me ride on this sweet breeze and waft away thither."
- Lu Tung, Tea Drinking
The best quality tea must have
creases like the leathern boot of Tartar horsemen, curl like the dewlap of a
mighty bullock, unfold like a mist rising out of a ravine, gleam like a lake
touched by a zephyr, and be wet and soft like a fine earth newly swept by rain.
- Lu Yu
As the centerpiece of a cherished
ritual, it's a talisman against the chill of winter, a respite from the ho-hum
routine of the day.
- Sarah Engler, "Tea Up," Real Simple magazine, February 2006
Tea! thou soft, thou sober, sage,
and venerable liquid,... thou female tongue-running, smile-smoothing,
heart-opening, wind-tippling cordial, to whose glorious insipidity I owe the
happiest moment of my life, let me fall prostrate.
- Colley Cibber, Lady's Last Stake
Cook, Cook, drink your tea,
But save some in the pot for me.
We'll watch the tea leaves in our cup
When our drink is all sipped up.
Happiness or fortune great,
What will our future be?
- R.Z. Berry, "Afternoon Tea at Pittock Mansion"
"Surely everyone is aware of the divine
pleasures which attend a wintry fireside: candles at four o'clock, warm hearth
rugs, tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample
draperies to the floor, whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without."
- Thomas De Quincey
"There is an action game for very small
children.
One arm is held out straight (the spout)
and the other is bent
so that the hand is on the hip (the handle).
Then the child recites:
I'm a little tea-pot, short and stout.
Here's my handle. Here's my spout.
Do you want a cup of tea?
Tip me up and pour me out!"
Personal Reflections
Tea, Tea Drinking, Tea Ceremony, Daoist Tea Drinking
By Mike Garofalo
February 1, 2011
First posted on the Internet on February 1, 2010
