Practice

I use lavender to make my own household cleaner and deodorizer. I make a tea from French lavender flowers, which I purchase from an on line supplier. To the tea, as it cools, I add a small amount of rubbing alcohol. Later I add a small amount of biodegradable dish soap and some vinegar. Voila! An environmentally friendly and disinfecting detergent.

 

The lavender flowers impress me every time. They look like purple rice grains. Their odor is evident when they are dried, but they fill my whole house with fragrance when I add them to boiling water. The water turns a deep purple, deep enough to dye white cotton, I suspect.

 

Making lavender tea is like transforming a distracted life to a life of practice. A life beaten down into dry conforming habit without intellectual questioning is like dried lavender. It may seem perfectly respectable and livable, but its impact on its own brain and its environment is limited. A life of mindfulness and compassion is like lavender tea.. It stimulates the brain with wonder. It has an inevitable impact on its environment. Crisis is often the boiling water of the tea of practice.