Whatever you do, only sky's the limit!

The time is always right to do what is right

Throughout the world, tea serves as an instrument allowing individuals to interact with each other. We so welcomingly embrace the ever-flowing teapot and infinitely containing teacup which serve as vehicles for mutual discussion. This is a universal function of tea in society.

When guests come from afar to visit and as host receives guests, isn't it wonderful to be greeted, warmed and comforted by a steaming cup of fragrant tea?


Warren Peltier "The Ancient Art of Tea"

                                                                                        

the wish for truth, wherever it leads...

The love of truth. One has to see it to believe it, to know what it really is like. The love of truth is not what we believe it is when we start the process of thought and dialogue. The ordinary intellect alone cannot really love truth. It can be "interested" in truth, but what it really loves and serves is usually something else, something not so beautiful in us. As Socrates shows through the genius of Plato's art, the love of truth can appear only when it has to be paid for inwardly, only when one comes upon the resistance of one's "own" entrenched opinions. When one comes upon this resistance and still presses on, abandoning the attachment to one's own thoughts, an inner action is taking place which Socrates presents as a foretaste of "dying."

Jacob Needleman "Why Can't We Be Good?"

There is no wrong way to make tea if...

Understand, if tea is going to speak to you, if tea is going to enter your heart and change your life, it will do so no matter how it is packaged, processed, or presented, no matter where it is from, how old it is, or how it is brewed. Whether a rare and priceless tea from a remote and exotic tea garden in China or your basic brand X, it doesn't matter. Weather in a Yixing pot or a Mason jar, if your intentions are honorable and you approach tea with reverence and respect, there is no wrong way to make it.

These are the moments of graciousness we all experience when it comes to tea etiquette. Moments of humility when someone makes a genuine effort to reach out to us. When human needs require greater attendance, tea's role is secondary.

Frank Hadley Murphy "The Spirit of Tea"

The Book of Tea

There is no single recipe for making the perfect tea, as there are no rules for producing a Titian or a Sesson.

Three most deplorable things in the world: the spoiling of fine youths through false education, the degradation of fine paintings through vulgar admiration, and the utter waste of fine tea through incompetent manipulation.

The observance of communal traditions involves a constant sacrifice of the individual to the state. Education, in order to keep up the mighty delusion, encourages a species of ignorance. People are not taught to be really virtuous, but to behave properly. We are wicked because we are frightfully self-conscious. We never forgive others because we know that we ourselves are in the wrong. We nurse a conscience because we are afraid to tell the truth to others; we take refuge in pride because we are afraid to tell the truth to ourselves. How can one be serious with the world when the world itself is so ridiculous! The spirit of barter is everywhere. Honour and Chastity!

The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings.

Vacuum is all-potent because all-containing.

Truth can be reached only through the comprehension of opposites.

True beauty could be discovered only by one who mentally completed the incomplete. The virility of life and art lay in its possibilities for growth.

Our mind is the canvas on which the artists lay their colour; their pigments are our emotions; their chiaroscuro the light of joy, the shadow of sadness. The masterpiece is of ourselves, as we are of the masterpiece.

We must remember, however, that art is of value only to the extent that it speaks to us. It might be a universal language if we ourselves were universal in our sympathies. Our finite nature, the power of tradition and conventionality, as well as our hereditary instincts, restrict the scope of our capacity for artistic enjoyment. Our very individuality establishes in one sense a limit to our understanding; and our aesthetic personality seeks its own affinities in the creations of the past. It is true that with cultivation our sense of art appreciation broadens, and we become able to enjoy many hitherto unrecognized expressions of beauty. but, after all, we see only our own image in the universe, - our particular idiosyncrasies dictate the mode of our perceptions.

In this democratic age of ours men clamour for what is popularly considered the best, regardless of their feelings. They want the costly, not the refined; the fashionable, not the beautiful. The name of the artist is more important to them than the quality of the work. "People criticize a picture by their ear."

Another common mistake is that of confusing art with archaeology. The old masters are rightly to be honoured for opening the path to the future enlightenment. The mere fact that they have passed unscathed through centuries of criticism and come down to us still covered with glory commands our respect. But we should be foolish indeed if we valued their achievement simply on the score of age. Yet we allow our historical sympathy to override our aesthetic discrimination.

Quotes from the "The Book of Tea"

  

Appreciation of art

Art, to be fully appreciated, must be true to contemporaneous life. It is not that we should ignore the the claims of posterity, but that we should seek to enjoy the present more. It is not that we should disregard the creations of the past, but that we should try to assimilate them into our consciousness. Slavish conformity to traditions and formulas fetters the expression of individuality in architecture. We can but weep over those senseless imitations of European buildings which one beholds in modern Japan. We marvel why, among the most progressive Western nations, architecture should be so devoid of originality, so replete with with repetitions of obsolete styles. Perhaps we are now passing through an age of democratisation in art, while awaiting the rise of some princely master who shall establish a new dynasty. Would that we loved the ancients more and copied them less! It has been said that the Greeks were great because they never drew from the antique.

Kakuzo Okakura "The Book of Tea"