"Favour and disgrace ...."

Favour and disgrace would seem equally to be feared; honour and
great calamity, to be regarded as personal conditions (of the same
kind).

What is meant by speaking thus of favour and disgrace? Disgrace is
being in a low position (after the enjoyment of favour). The getting
that (favour) leads to the apprehension (of losing it), and the losing
it leads to the fear of (still greater calamity):--this is what is
meant by saying that favour and disgrace would seem equally to be
feared.

And what is meant by saying that honour and great calamity are to be
(similarly) regarded as personal conditions? What makes me liable to
great calamity is my having the body (which I call myself); if I had
not the body, what great calamity could come to me?

Therefore he who would administer the kingdom, honouring it as he
honours his own person, may be employed to govern it, and he who would
administer it with the love which he bears to his own person may be
entrusted with it.

Tao Te Ching, Chapter 13 (translated by James Legge)

On tea drinking

On tea drinking:

The first cup moistens my lips and throat,

The second cup breaks my loneliness,

The third cup searches my barren entrails,

The fourth cup raises a slight perspiration,

The fifth cup purifies me,

The sixth cup calls me to the realms of the immortals,

The seventh cup – Ah, but I can take no more.

by a scholar of the seventh century

"The Holy Longing"

Tell a wise person or else keep silent.

For the mass man will mock it right away.

I praise what is truly alive,

What longs to be burned to death.

               

In the calm waters of the love nights

Where you were begotten

Where you have begotten

A strange feeling comes over you

When you see the silent candle burning.

Now, no longer caught

In the obsession with darkness

Desire for higher love-making

Sweeps you upward.

Distance does not make you

Falter now, flying

Arriving in magic

You are the moth and you are gone.

So long as you have not

Experienced this:

To die and so to grow

You are only a troubled guest

On the dark earth.

Goethe

"If there is to be any peace ...."

If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having.

Henry Miller

"Where my caravan has rested ...."

Where my caravan has rested, flowers I leave you on the grass.

Monica Dickens