wise words

to live without that enchantment of beauty is to interpret frugality and simple living with a puritan literalism

- john lane

eating with the fullest pleasure - pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance - is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. in this pleasure we experience and celebrate our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living from mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend.

- wendell berry

at lunch time prepare a meal for yourself. cook the meal and wash the dishes in mindfulness. in the morning after you have cleaned and straightened up your house, after you have worked in the garden or watched clouds or gathered flowers, prepare a pot of tea to sit and drink in mindfulness. allow yourself a good length of time to do this. don't drink your tea like someone who gulps down a cup of coffee during a workbreak. drink your tea slowly and reverently as if it were the axis on which the earth revolves - slowly, evenly, without rushing towards the future. live the actual moment. for only this actual moment is life.

- thich nhat hanh