Whose brew is it anyway?

A cup of tea a day keeps worries away. If tea can’t fix it, it’s a serious problem! One of the many tea quotes that brings a smile to many. I had brewed ginger tea at home in the morning and received compliments from my better half that it was a perfect brew. My ego staked a claim: “I am the perfect tea maker in the world.”

In the evening, as I was sipping my favourite chai latte at a tea shop with a dash of cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, cloves, and a biscotti as accompaniment, it felt like the perfect end to a hard day’s work. As I embarked on a self-reflection, doing an inevitable comparison of the teas, I lapsed into a reverie.

Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita has asked us to expunge greed, lust, envy, and ego and replace them with love, humility, compassion, and devotion. It occurred to me: What can I possibly call ‘mine’ when everything is ‘His?’

The tea prepared by me contained tea powder from the tea plants grown in some tea estates. Workers tirelessly sown and reaped the harvest for their owners, whereas the actual nourishment for the plant came from sunshine, air, water, and the soil, which are the essential ingredients of nature. They had escaped any attack from insects and pests, which helped them grow to their full size. They were harvested, followed by an elaborate tea-making process by a manufacturer using a full range of equipment. They were then packaged and transported; in essence, the tea powder that I had boiled had made it through a series of sluice gates that were beyond my control and comprehension.

The above is true of the ginger that added flavour to the tea that I prepared. What about the milk that I boiled with the water? Oh, and then the electricity, the gas used for heating, the vessel in which I prepared the tea, and then what not! How could I even claim that I prepared this tea, even if it tasted very good?

I feel overpowered by the Almighty—the Owner and the Maker. Can I even stake a claim for ownership of my own thoughts?  If tea on that day kept me grounded, it felt beneficial to undertake the ‘Me-to-Him’ journey.