Japanese Ceremonial Tea Interlude by The Electric Sons Lyrics
This is Japanese Ceremonial Tea
It’s good on a cold day
See, our problem is we don't really know how to stop, we’ve got something started and we see it's going in the wrong direction
And I think the difficulty is,
To borrow an old Chinese saying,
That when the wrong man uses the right means, the right means work in the wrong way.
In other words there is something wrong with the way we think, and while that is there, everything we do will be a mess
Now what is it that’s wrong?
Now as far as I can see, the basic mistake is that we’ve invented this wonderful system of language and calculation and that it is at once too simple to deal with the complexities in the world
And also we are liable to confuse that system of simpleness with the world itself just as we confuse, say, money with wealth
A lot of people are in business to make money instead of wealth, when they make the money, they don’t know what to do with it.
No wonder we feel cut off from everything, alienated – frightened of life and death.
So what has to happen is we have to come back to a view of our own life, which is the way we really are – an organism functioning in terms of the whole environment, with the whole environment.
Instead of this funny little separate personality.
But how are we going to do that?
You can’t transform yourself, you can’t make yourself sane, you can’t make yourself loving, you can’t make yourself unselfish.
And yet it is absolutely necessary that we be that way.
If we are going to hand over the direction of nature to nature, it’s absolutely necessary.
I’m not going to say what we should do, but simply, that before we think of doing it – in this critical situation, we realize the completely illusory nature of our beings we think we are.
And with that again, to the beings we really are.
Which includes, all this.
Outside world, no longer left outside.
It’s good on a cold day
See, our problem is we don't really know how to stop, we’ve got something started and we see it's going in the wrong direction
And I think the difficulty is,
To borrow an old Chinese saying,
That when the wrong man uses the right means, the right means work in the wrong way.
In other words there is something wrong with the way we think, and while that is there, everything we do will be a mess
Now what is it that’s wrong?
Now as far as I can see, the basic mistake is that we’ve invented this wonderful system of language and calculation and that it is at once too simple to deal with the complexities in the world
And also we are liable to confuse that system of simpleness with the world itself just as we confuse, say, money with wealth
A lot of people are in business to make money instead of wealth, when they make the money, they don’t know what to do with it.
No wonder we feel cut off from everything, alienated – frightened of life and death.
So what has to happen is we have to come back to a view of our own life, which is the way we really are – an organism functioning in terms of the whole environment, with the whole environment.
Instead of this funny little separate personality.
But how are we going to do that?
You can’t transform yourself, you can’t make yourself sane, you can’t make yourself loving, you can’t make yourself unselfish.
And yet it is absolutely necessary that we be that way.
If we are going to hand over the direction of nature to nature, it’s absolutely necessary.
I’m not going to say what we should do, but simply, that before we think of doing it – in this critical situation, we realize the completely illusory nature of our beings we think we are.
And with that again, to the beings we really are.
Which includes, all this.
Outside world, no longer left outside.