Quotes:
Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk who has been called the “world’s calmest man,” has spent a lifetime exploring how to live in kairos, albeit by a different name.
He has taught it as mindfulness or maintaining “beginner’s mind.” He has written: “Mindfulness helps you go home to the present. And every time you go there and recognize a condition of happiness that you have, happiness comes.”
This focus on being in the moment affects the way he does everything. He takes a full hour to drink a cup of tea with the other monks every day. He explains: “Suppose you are drinking a cup of tea. When you hold your cup, you may like to breathe in, to bring your mind back to your body, and you become fully present. And when you are truly there, something else is also there—life, represented by the cup Of tea. In that moment you are real, and the cup of tea is real. You are not lost in the past, in the future, in your projects, in your worries. You are free from all of these afflictions. And in that state of being free, you enjoy your tea.
Everything else will fade into insignificance by comparison.
Remember that anytime you fail to say “no” to a nonessential, you are really saying yes by default.