“Closing my eyes, I find green mountains and pure water within my own heart. Silently sitting alone and drinking tea, I feel these become a part of me.”

“Tea is an act complete in its simplicity.When I drink tea, there is only me and the tea.The rest of the world dissolves.There are no worries about the future.No dwelling on past mistakes.Tea is simple: loose-leaf tea, hot pure water, a cup.I inhale the scent, tiny delicate pieces of the tea floating above the cup.I drink the tea, the essence of the leaves becoming a part of me.I am informed by the tea, changed.This is the act of life, in one pure moment, and in this act the truth of the world suddenly becomes revealed: all the complexity, pain, drama of life is a pretense, invented in our minds for no good purpose.There is only the tea, and me, converging.”

“It is astonishing to realize that growing up actually means to become one with Existence. It means to find the whole Existence within myself, it means to discover that Existence is alive in my own heart and being. The song of a bird echoes my own inner voice, the beauty of a flower reflects my own inner beauty, a dog becomes an expression of my own unconditional love and friendship, the majestic mountains create an exstatic joy, and I discover all the shining stars of the sky within my own heart. It is to realize that the whole Existence is alive, and that the underlying thread of consciousness is God.”

“I was born with music inside me. Music was one of my parts. Like my ribs, my kidneys, my liver, my heart. Like my blood. It was a force already within me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me-like food or water.”

“What would tomorrow bring? I wondered. Both hands on the wheel, I closed my eyes. I didn’t feel like I was in my own body; my body was just a lonely, temporary container I happened to be borrowing. What would become of me tomorrow I did not know.”

“I laughed so hard I nearly spit out my hot tea. The strange part was the fact that I was drinking coffee at that moment.”