What we do looks like very rigid and formal, but if you repeat this kind of practice over and over, you will find out some unique feeling, in our rituals and formalities. As we have not much good thing in Japan, especially, civil war time, when tea ceremony started—not much things to eat, or not much cake to serve, not much good tea to take, but—our life at that time was so hard, that we tried to help with each other by serving a cup of tea, or a piece of cake. And to prepare a piece of cake, and cup of tea is pretty difficult. All of us knew how it is to help people, to give, to serve a cup of tea—so we took it with great appreciation. If you take a piece of cake, you know, a small piece of cake as if you were eating a piece of bread [laughs], it doesn’t make any sense. [laughs] So we treat it very carefully, and we took even a cup of tea with great care and appreciation. That is how tea ceremony started. --------------------------- Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture - 66-03-26-C - as found on shunryusuzuki.com, from one of the newly discovered (2021) lecture tapes. Edited by DC - Going through Suzuki lectures and posting anything that can stand on its own. Not looking for zingers or "the best of." I find that following these excerpts daily provides another way to experience Suzuki's teaching. Go to https://www.instagram.com/cuke_archives/ for more daily Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts - with a photo
