Today we shall meditate on a cup of tea.
This morning if you went with us on the walking meditation you saw Thay drinking his tea, peacefully and happily. Drinking tea is also a meditation. When you look into the tea what do you see? I see a cloud. I see a cloud floating in the tea. Yesterday the tea was a cloud up in the sky but today it has become the tea in my glass.
And when you look up on the blue sky you don’t see your cloud anymore and you might say, oh my cloud has died. In fact it has not died, it has become the tea in Thay’s cup. So when I look mindfully to the tea, I see my cloud. I say “Hello my cloud, I see you.” And when I drink my tea I drink my cloud.
You know you are made of cloud. At least 70% of you are cloud. You know if you take the cloud out of you there’s no you left. So cloud is a good subject of meditation. And a cloud has a good time traveling. When it falls down it does not die, it just becomes the rain a cloud can never die. A cloud can become snow or rain or ice but a cloud can never die. So the cloud becomes the rain, the rain becomes the creek on a mountain and the creek flows down and becomes a river and the river goes to the sea and the heat generated with the sun helps the water in the ocean evaporate and become cloud again.
So the cloud has a good time traveling wearing all kinds of form, wearing all kinds of appearance. You know this, the cloud has become the tea and Thay is going to drink this tea. And what will become this tea It will become a dharma talk. My dear little cloud I am drinking you. You will become one with me. And thanks to you I am going to give a dharma talk to the children.
Because I know how to drink my tea mindfully, that is why I can see the cloud in my tea and I can see that the cloud is very helpful and it would help Thay to give the dharma talk. Without the cloud, no dharma talk is possible.
Remember you are made of cloud also. At least 70% of you is cloud. So smile to the cloud in your tea, smile to the cloud in your body. And next time when you are about to eat an ice cream, look, look at the ice cream and you see a cloud in your ice cream. I think you can, if you take 2, 3 seconds to look into your ice cream you can see your cloud in the ice cream before you eat the ice cream, smile to the cloud in your ice cream first. That is meditation. That’s easy, very pleasant thing to do.
Smile to the cloud in your tea. When you cry there’s a cloud in your tears. And maybe the tea that you drank yesterday has become part of your tears and that is why I also wrote “the tears I shed yesterday have become rain”.