When you sit in a café, with a lot of music in the background and a lot of projects in your head, you're not really drinking your coffee or your tea. You're drinking your projects, you're drinking your worries. You are not real, and the coffee is not real either. Your coffee can only reveal itself to you as a reality when you go back to your self and produce your true presence, freeing yourself from the past, the future, and from your worries. When you are real, the tea also becomes real and the encounter between you and the tea is real. This is genuine tea drinking.
Nhat HanhAt first glance, that might seem a little silly: why put so much stress on a simple thing? But that's precisely the point.
Nhat HanhDue to attachment, anger, and foolishness, I have committed numberless mistakes in speech, deed and thought. I bow my head and repent. I vow from today to begin anew, to live day and night in mindfulness, and not to repeat my previous mistakes.
Nhat HanhThe past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life.
Nhat Hanh