drinking tea from an empty cup

"Don't think about that home, Anjin-san," Mariko had once said when the dark mists were on him. "Real home is here - the other's ten million times ten million sticks away. Here is reality. You'll send yourself mad if you try to get wa out of such impossibilities. Listen, if you want peace you must learn to drink cha from an empty cup."

She had shown him how. "You think reality into the cup, you think the cha there - the warm, pale-green drink of the gods. If you concentrate hard ... Oh, a Zen teacher could show you, Anjin-san. It is most difficult but so easy. How I wish I was clever enough to show it to you, for then all things in the world can be yours for the asking ... even the most uobtainable gift - perfect tranquility."

- James Clavell, Shogun (858)