Zen Tea Ceremony and Guru Principle

So, the eating of good food is a kind of a addiction. It’s a kind of an addiction; it’s something like drug – that you must have good food. So Zen started this system of what they call the tea ceremony. In the tea ceremony what they did, I mean, I have been through that and it’s really quite a test of people. With Me it was alright, but the rest of them got really frightened. That in the tea ceremony whatever rituals they do they give you a tea, which is so bitter, and we can say [like] quinine raised to power 108! It’s like that. And they give you very nicely, handle you with such ritual that you have to take it. So first they say, “You see the cup without thinking.” So he tried to make thoughtless awareness through the cup. I don’t know how much one can achieve with that. But that tea if you take once, your tongue is good for anything. And to compensate it they give you something sweet, which is again sweetness raised to power 108, so sweet that it becomes bitter! So sweet. So this is just to conquer the tongue [that] Zen must have thought that better give them this tea ceremony where there is no tea, there’s nothing but just you really give such shocks to your tongue, so that after that you can eat whatever you get. And that’s why you must know that Japanese can eat anything. They have solved their food problem because they can eat anything! They can just fish out some crabs or could be some prawns, just peel them out like peanuts and eat them like that. I think Zen has solved this problem for them, because they have food shortage and this is how they can eat everything: they can eat the bark of the tree, they can eat the snake, they can eat the lizards, they can eat the frogs, everything they can eat, so all their eating problems are solved in that country by Zen, I think, because you have no taste.