There are many stories about exchanges between Zen Masters and students that end with the Zen Master saying, “Have a cup of tea.”
The cup of tea is the Buddha-Dharma and tasting it is experiencing your Buddha-Nature, original nature, the ever-changing interdependence with everything, dharma. Just this. It is direct experience, not a mental construct, not a thought. It is letting go of thought. That is our practice, that is zazen.
Just be ordinary. It sounds so simple and it is, but difficult to do. Why? Our normal experience is to feel separate from everything. To run after what we like and run away from what we don’t, or like-dislike, desire-avoid, include-exclude, feel secure-feel insecure. It is our usual experience to be thrown about by the winds of desire, perception, conception, attachments. This we think is our life. In the process we miss out on how extraordinary this very moment is. What if we were like a net that the winds of desire just blew through with nothing to cling to? What if we were to open the hand of thought, loosen our grasp? This is tasting the tea. Being truly ordinary, compassionate, awake to what is happening right now is going to the other shore, it is nirvana. It is not becoming something, it is being who you already are!
Please have a cup of tea…