Tea Life Tea Minds Analysis

After reading the excerpts from the “Tea life, tea minds”, I was immediately attracted by the second one, especially the statement that “we are controlled by objects; the users become the used”, which vividly describes the current state of many of us. Living in a world where technology has provided us with great convenience and comfort, we enjoy the benefit brought by these creative inventions while at the same time become over attached to them, thereby unconsciously turning into their slaves. In order to be our own masters, we have to remove our excessive material desires, concentrate more on completing our tasks as well as explore its underlying meanings instead of the mere result, and prepare for any unexpected circumstances. Eventually,
As mentioned in the excerpt that “we must not rely upon the world of objects for guidance or knowledge”, although material richness may offer us much joy and even some useful tools to improve our study or career, we often ignore the potential danger of losing ourselves by exceedingly clinging to it. Take cellphone as an example, initially, it is designed to help increase the quality of our life and enhance our working efficiency. Nevertheless, ironically, the phone which supposedly shortens the distance between each other sometimes separates our hearts further away, since we stare at our phones all the time but barely communicate with someone including our family and friends face-to-face; the phone which supposedly facilitates our learning process sometimes indeed distracts us from our job, since we are so obsessed with our phones that we even use them during classes or work, forgetting to perform our duties. Gradually, cellphones grasp all of our attention and take up our whole lives, which not only hinder us from fully experiencing the real world but also make us deviate from our aims. This is exactly how “the users become the used”. Besides, according to the Zen Buddhism, everything is impermanent and ever-changing. Therefore, the object that we are craving for never lasts long, resulting in our endless suffering of not being able to hold it. However, diminishing our attachments is not the same
As Dr. Sen points out in the excerpt, we have been used to weighing the results before every action and thus easily neglect what we truly like as well as what we can benefit from the process. For instance, if we choose classes only based on whether we can earn a good final grade, we may miss some precious opportunities to expand our horizon and discover where our real interest lies. The meaning of attending those courses is not restrained to acquiring a high GPA, but more crucially, to understand the course content and improve ourselves. Likewise, in Chado, the purpose of following the rigid procedure is not merely remembering all the physical movements but more substantially, to cultivate a tranquil mental status and understand the spirit of Tea through the process. Hence, in our daily life, it is significant for us to contemplate and explore about the inherent nature of things instead of staying on the surface. Also, whatever we do, we shall commit our whole hearts to it and then be satisfied with any consequence without