Tae Soo Gi, A Dirty Water Bowl

Dirty water pools in you like a lowly marsh, yet everything about you is far from low. The water in you now was once bubbling from a fresh pristine mountain spring. It was taken from the mountain before traversing the waters path from mountain streams, into rivers, then fed back into the sea or perhaps, by chance, making its way to an unmoving algae covered swamp.

Instead, the water contained in you traversed a different path but, in all of its differences, in spirit, it is almost the same. The water taken from mountain springs, before being thrust upon the outer clay of a yixing pot, the dusty glaze of a rarely used tea cup, the dirty green shallow of a chawan, or over the dusty filth of old peurh leaves, washing them clean, purifying them.

Then falling on such natural clay, the clay of the earth, clay of a tea table, the clay of Kim Kyoung Soo's kiln. Draining from high places to low before laying idle, still, unmoving in your natural shallow.

In you browns like that of the earth console what was once pure.

In you greens like that of the life that you give to what was once dead.

Blacks cast shadows over still waters.

Whites enlighten ones spirit. The white of the brushstroke, validating your beauty. Making you no less beautiful than the chawan that rests high on the shelf with such a similarly mindful gye yal.

Oh what a shame such dirty, filthy water lies within something so beautiful as you.

You and only you can make such filth look so beautiful once more in stillness. In stillness, one sits in mediation contemplating these things.

Peace