Thursday, April 24, 2008

The Way of Tea: Retroactive Post

A few weeks ago, my sado-bu teacher gave me this book and I just started reading it the other day.

The Book of Tea

It's DEEP, in the way that I remember Albert talking about other writings on Asian practices, like Buddhism or Kung Fu. I think I'm finally getting to the point where I'm getting past the superficial layers of this 'hobby' and really getting to the meat of it. It's enlightening and moving in a way that I have found lacking in religion or other spiritual writings.

I certainly don't want to be one of the New Age-y generation that comes from America and falls into "Asia" and takes up tai chi and becomes Buddhist or whatever, but I can see the draw. Living here does change you, in ways more subtle than you realize, and I think that I am certainly the better for it.

It's a tiny book, and one can easily finish it in an hour of reading, but another thing I've learned while in Japan is the value of 'slow' and doing things slowly. This is just the type of thing that deserves to be read and enjoyed and digested (mentally), slowly; that is better for having done so.

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