Taking Tea With Friends

[Kristopher]

~

Now we listen to the sound of boiling water in the kettle, resting on a tripod over a fire in the square hole cut in the floor. The sound is not actually that of boiling water but comes from the heavy iron kettle, and it is most appropriately likened by the connoisseur to a breeze that passes through the pine grove. It adds greatly to the serenity of the room, for a man here feels as if he were sitting alone in a mountain hut where a white cloud and the pine music are his only consoling companions.

To take a cup of tea with friends in this environment, talking probably about the sumiye sketch in the alcove or some artistic topic suggested by the tea utensils in the room, lifts the mind above the perplexities of life.

The warrior is saved from his daily occupation of fighting, the businessman from his ever-present idea of money making. It is not something, indeed, to find in this world of struggles and vanities a corner, however humble, where a man can rise above the limits of relativity and have even a glimpse of eternity?