Steam rises from the small porcelain cup as the morning light spills across my table. I’ve measured the leaves — Shi Ru Wuyi Oolong, stone milk — and poured the water with the slow care the practice deserves. The aroma is mineral and warm, with a soft sweetness that deepens in the second steep. I drink, not for refreshment alone, but to watch how the tea changes from sip to sip, as if each infusion is a new voice joining the conversation.
This is how the day begins: not with rushing or scripting, but with something so simple it resists my habit of turning it into a story. The light doesn’t care about my urge to narrate it. The tea doesn’t ask to be explained. They both simply are — here, now — and the moment shifts before I can hold it still.
These flashes of unfiltered experience feel like small gifts from a generous world. The angle of the light on the wood grain. A bird landing and leaving again. The heat of the cup in my hands. All of it quietly suggests: just see.
And when I do, the constant commentary in my head softens. The moment reveals itself without my rearranging it into some private play with myself in the lead role. In that space, reality becomes open-ended, willing to surprise me.
This, I think, is my practice — to remain with such moments whenever they arrive, whether they’re as delicate as the scattering of seed husks below the feeder or as sudden as laughter in a quiet room. Each hints at the truth of interdependent origination, where nothing arises alone.
Of course, I lose it easily — pulled back into noticing the uneven paint on my porch, the stiffness in my knee, the list of errands. Samsara again. This is life.
So I steep the next round of tea. The stone milk’s creaminess lingers at the back of the tongue, now touched with a gentle floral note. With each cup, I return — to the present, to the meeting point of form and emptiness, where even a single swallow can be enough to wake me up.