‘Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves - slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future.’ ~Thich Nhat Hanh

By Leo Babauta

Yesterday I had tea with a Daoist tea monk who said for tea to change you, you have to create a sacred space in your heart for the tea.

Imagine that space for a moment. How does it feel? What can reside in that sacred space? How different is it from mechanically drinking tea, without paying attention to it?

Now think about the difference between just drinking tea, as if you were drinking anything and not really paying attention … and drinking tea with that sacred space in your heart for that tea. It’s profoundly different, and it changes everything.

You can do that for anything, not just tea. Anything that’s important to you.

If you create a sacred space in your heart for something, it changes how you do it. It changes you, at the molecular level.

We crank through things these days -- email, social networks, news, work tasks, calls, meetings, deadlines -- and then the day is gone. This is a waste of a miracle, the day that we’ve been given.

Instead, create a sacred space for that which matters most:

• meditation, yoga, tea

• reading at bedtime with your child

• having tea with your spouse

• a daily walk

• writing

• your most important and creative work

Perhaps every moment should have a sacred space in our hearts, but we have to start somewhere. Pick something small but important, and create that space today.

Tea is drunk to forget the din of the world.’ ~T’ien Yiheng