In the tea-room the fear of repetition is a constant presence. The various objects for the decoration of a room should be so selected that no colour or design shall be repeated.
True beauty could be discovered only by one who mentally completed the incomplete.
should be remembered in the first place that Taoism, like its legitimate successor Zennism, represents the individualistic trend of the Southern Chinese mind in contra-distinction to the communism of Northern China which expressed itself in Confucianism.
Taoism was an active power during the Shin dynasty, that epoch of Chinese unification from which we derive the name China.
the southern Zen sect, which incorporated so much of Taoist doctrines
The Emperor Kiasung (1101-1124), who was too great an artist to be a well-behaved monarch
Luwuh considered the blue as the ideal colour for the tea-cup, as it lent additional greenness to the beverage, whereas the white made it look pinkish and distasteful. It was because he used cake-tea. Later on, when the tea masters of Sung took to the powdered tea, they preferred heavy bowls of blue-black and dark brown. The Mings, with their steeped tea, rejoiced in light ware of white porcelain.
