When a man, in exhilaration, lies intoxicated on strewn flowers, the heavens become his blanket and the earth his pillow. And when he, in subduing artifice, sits in a trance on a huge rock, he feels that from time immemorial to the present moment all things are but ephemeral.

Looking at the busy bees in a fragrant and luxuriant garden, one may become disillusioned about the life of the senses and the ways of the world. Beholding the sleeping swallows in a quiet and humble hovel, one may arouse in oneself a cool pleasure and a deep contemplation.

Up until Rikyu’s time, the Tea-Men taught a high standard of refinement and graceful living. But it was a style of life demanding luxury and leisure. It was not only beyond the reach of the poor but did not contain many of the other elements essential for a true religion. Rikyu added these elements. They were: a unified view of man and nature, and complete spiritual contentment obtained by harmoniously blending everyday life with reality. Those who followed the Way of Tea were promised a long life unmarred by ill health and worries, and when their time came they would be able to accept death calmly and contentedly. As an exercise in aesthetics, the tea ceremony is all inclusive. It teaches the way to perfect understanding of beauty, and once the Teaist reaches this goal, provides a means for him to exercise his new-found understanding on the highest level. Philosophically, the Way of Tea teaches man to recognize and accept his relation with nature, to have respect for all nature including his fellow human beings, to be pure of mind and to behave quietly.

(Source: This Ivy House)

Along the Sacred Way, from Daphni to the sea, I was on the point of madness several times. I actually did start running up the hillside only to stop midway, terror-stricken, wondering what had taken possession of me. On one side are stones and shrubs which stand out with microscopic clarity; on the other are trees such as one sees in Japanese prints, trees flooded with light, intoxicated, corybantic trees which must have been planted by the gods in moments of drunken exaltation. One should not race along the Sacred Way in a motor car—it is sacrilege. One should walk, walk as the men of old walked, and allow one’s whole being to become flooded with light. This is not a Christian highway: it was made by the feet of devout pagans on their way to initiation at Eleusis. There is no suffering, no martyrdom, no flagellation of the flesh connected with this processional artery. Everything here speaks now, as it did centuries ago, of illumination, of blinding, joyous illumination. Light acquires a transcendental quality: it is not the light of the Mediterranean alone, it is something more, something unfathomable, something holy. Here the light penetrates directly to the soul, opens the doors and windows of the heart, makes one naked, exposed, isolated in a metaphysical bliss which makes everything clear without being known. No analysis can go on in this light: here the neurotic is either instantly healed or goes mad. The rocks themselves are quite mad: they have been lying for centuries exposed to this divine illumination: they lie very still and quiet, nestling amid dancing colored shrubs in a blood-stained soil, but they are mad, I say, and to touch them is to risk losing one’s grip on everything which once seemed firm, solid and unshakeable. One must glide through this gully with extreme caution, naked, alone, and devoid of all Christian humbug. One must throw off two thousand years of ignorance and superstition, of morbid, sickly subterranean living and lying. One must come to Eleusis stripped of the barnacles which have accumulated from centuries of lying in stagnant waters. At Eleusis one realizes, if never before, that there is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy. At Eleusis one becomes adapted to the cosmos. Outwardly Eleusis may seem broken, disintegrated with the crumbled past; actually Eleusis is still intact and it is we who are broken, dispersed, crumbling to dust. Eleusis lives, lives eternally in the midst of a dying world.