The traditional Chinese way of maintaining health is a way of life reflected in the thoughts of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism.
Chunqiu Fanlu said: "The reason why a benevolent person has a long life is that he has no greed on the outside and is pure on the inside. His mind is peaceful without losing his integrity, and he takes the beauty of heaven and earth to nourish his body." This shows the basics of health preservation. The content is to warm up to people and flirt with their temperament.
Since the Song Dynasty, spiritual activities focusing on nourishing one’s temperament have emerged in China, represented by incense, tea, flowers, and books, which are the most important leisure culture in traditional health care.
To put it simply, calligraphy pays most attention to the development of form, technique and inner aesthetic quality. Its purpose is not to write beautiful calligraphy, but to train to write through the tools and forms of writing. Control the rhythm of your inner soul and write visually creative and good calligraphy without falling into the trap of cliché.
What concerns calligraphy is not whether the fonts look good, but whether they can express a fresh and elegant style.
The way of calligraphy pursues a kind of visual beauty composed of lines, structure, movement, nine palaces and other contents in a two-dimensional space. The ancients called it cloth white, which is arrangement. , the meaning of creating new space value.
In terms of practice, ikebana is to use a unique style to create a situation in a three-dimensional space. Therefore, not only should you be creative in the arrangement and selection of flower materials and flower utensils, but also in the combination. , through the effect of light and shadow, the environment where it is located produces different, new and unique values.
So ikebana is the most important thing about space creativity, and it does not even have to have flowers in the process, and it is most taboo about being gaudy. Therefore, ikebana is not the same as flower arrangement and floral art.
The study of tea ceremony, in addition to the foundation of creating a unique realm, also requires the process and skills of using tea in the tea room. If you want to make good tea, you cannot rely on hard work alone. This is not only related to the use of utensils, types of tea and understanding of tea tasting methods, but also related to tea and philosophy, aesthetics and literary literacy, etc. Its content is more complicated than ikebana. If you only know how to sell tea and make tea, , pouring tea, no matter how many tricks there are, is just a matter of serving others
In the Song Dynasty, incense ceremony was the most difficult to learn, the most expensive in terms of cost, and the most profound in terms of cultivation. The reason why it is difficult to learn is that not only do you need to have a basic knowledge of books, flowers, and incense, but you also need to know a little bit about incense and medicine before you can mix incense.
To master the control of the five elements of incense {incense, fire, furnace, ashes, carbon} in the introduction to incense, in terms of cultivation, you not only need to have a little exposure to the three schools of thought of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism, but also Gaining some understanding is a high-level health-preserving activity that uses the brain moderately and concentrates the mind, which can temporarily escape the worries of external affairs and make the mind comfortable. Therefore, the incense ceremony is not just about burning incense and smelling the fragrance.
The essence and purpose of leisure is to maintain health. Therefore, in terms of methods and mentality, once you are trapped by Taoism, it is better not to do anything. Therefore, how to integrate health care into life and experience the joy of life in a healthy life is the right way.
Since any great principle of life is not true once it is divorced from life, beginners must first learn to take a break from the busy schedule and let it go at any time. Practice writing calligraphy, arranging flowers, making tea, burning incense, and try the leisurely fun. When the soul's interests are touched and needed, then naturally go to the Tao, and the mind will change from small to big, and the world will become bigger. External objects will gradually become relatively insignificant. This is nourishing one's nature.
Therefore, the incense path can also be realized through different levels of activities in health preservation. Occasionally bathing in fragrant soup and learning how to appreciate incense are all different forms of leisure and health care in the fragrant life.