I'm very grateful for the tea friends in France who sent me this calligraphy by Thich Nhat Hanh. There are many possible interpretations for this short sentence. The word cloud is the most enigmatic and poetic here. In Chinese, yun, cloud, also means the aftertaste of tea! And a tea that produces aftertaste is one that will always make one smile, because it's so good and full of emotions.
A cloudy tea, however, would mean a tea that isn't clear and not well processed. This is probably not the meaning of the author to smile when you drink bad tea. But maybe you should smile when you drink bad tea, because you won't feel better if you start complaining. Even if the tea is bad, you can appreciate the fact that you are alive and have experience and good memories of good teas that enable you to tell that this tea is bad. It's only with the experience of good and bad that one makes progress. And if you are drinking tea, even a bad one, be satisfied that you have found time in your day for a pause when you can listen to your own thoughts!
And it's also fun to imagine a modern meaning to the word 'cloud', a place where we store our digital documents. Smile at the virtual world! Smile at the effort and passion you put into your tea and life! All this will come to pass much sooner than we expect (as the candles on the birthday cake care to remind us!) So smile and enjoy your tea!
And that's why I finished a very rare 1990 aged high mountain Oolong that day. It had a very clear brew and lots of aftertaste that definitely made me smile!
Quelles excellentes réflexions! Something to ponder again. K
ReplyDeleteJust my thought, I think you already this this before, catch a photo of a cloud reflecting on the tea. Maybe he is asking us to go outside to drink our tea and stare at the clouds no matter are in the sky or on the tea :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments. Yes Toni3d, Smile at the life that reflects in your tea! See life as a reflection in something beautiful and pure that is also fleating...
ReplyDeleteThich Nhat Hanh always talks about how we are a piece of all. Perhaps drinking our tea we are drinking a cloud :)
ReplyDeleteThat's very true Toni3d, because in the cycle of water the cloud will transform into rain, which will become groundwater and then water nourishing tea and used to brew it! When we drink tea we drink water from a former cloud!
ReplyDeleteMi little niece hosted a tea party for the women in the family. My mother in law put cream on her tea an she said "it´s like a cloud on the tea". I smiled and remembered this quote of Thich Nhat Hann :)
ReplyDeleteI believe smile to the cloud in your tea is about the nature of no birth no death, continuation. A cloud will become rain, the rain will become your tea and the tea will become one with you. So the cloud has many forms it never dies and we are 70% water
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