Since noise is increasing in all directions, the psychology of silence has taken on a special meaning. We are already so adapted to an abundance of screeching sound that we are surprised when stillness suddenly envelops us. Not that this happens very often. We begin to see that the whole question of our relation to the world, both positive and negative, centers in something like silence. So our service to the world might be simply to keep a place where there is no noise, where people can be silent together.
~ from THE SPRINGS OF CONTEMPLATION by Thomas Merton
This earth is my sister: I love her daily grace, her silent daring, and how loved I am, how we admire this strength in each other, all that we have lost, all that we have suffered, all that we know: we are stunned by this beauty, and I do not forget: what she is to me, what I am to her.
Beauty lies at the heart of the tea ceremony. Each object used must be beautiful. Special cups are made for this ceremony. Even to look on these cups is to be brought into a wider, calmer realm of the self.
The tea master Okakura KaKuzo has said that beauty evokes harmony and the mystery of mutual charity... . All that we call beautiful is a kind of vessel, like love, that holds what we know.
The Child is an almost universal symbol for the soul's transformation. The child is whole, not yet divided. When we would heal the mind, we ask this child to speak to us.
