God's Favorite Flower
Flower is always an undivisable part of Hindu prayers and offerings to the God. In Eastern thought, the blooming of a flower is often described the Magic of the Master (God's Maya) and glorified by ancient poets and artists.
"Flowers speak to us when we know how to listen to them--it is a subtle and fragrant language" is an axiom that is part of the ancient culture of the East. In ancient India, the process of distillation came in existence to capture the very essence of the fragile flower and in that way to encapsulate the tremendous energy and positivity of individual flower in form of essential oils.
The beauty of flowers arises from their purity and true spirituality. But they have in them also the seed of a psychic presence and it is this presence appearing through the transparency of vegetal life that gives them their inexpressible splendor. It is a glimpse of the Divine manifesting as beauty.The world's most beautiful flower is also the most sacred, and it seems there never was a time when Hindus did not adore the lotus.....
Both in worship and in portrayals of the divine, hindus are infatuated with flowers.
The very name of the Hindu worship ritual, puja, can be translated as "flower act." Elaborate and simple garlands, fragrant whole flowers and piles of petals daily rain over Deities in temple, home and village shrines wherever Hindus worship. Though any available flower is auspicious for puja, Gods and Goddesses are said to have specific likes and dislikes of certain species. .
The lotus is the foremost symbol of beauty, prosperity and fertility. According to Hinduism, within each human inhabiting the earth is the spirit of the sacred lotus. It represents eternity, purity and divinity and is widely used as a symbol of life, fertility, ever-renewing youth and to describe feminine beauty, especially the eyes.
One of the most common metaphysical analogies compares the lotus' perennial rise to faultless beauty from a miry environment to the evolution of man's consciousness--from instinctive impulses to spiritual liberation. In the Bhagavad Gita, man is adjured to be like the lotus--he should work without attachment, dedicating his actions to God--untouched by sin like water on a lotus leaf and the beautiful flower standing high above the mud and water. In the postures of hatha yoga, the lotus position, padmasana, is adopted by those striving to reach the highest level of consciousness, which itself is found in the thousand-petalled lotus chakra at the top of the head. For Buddhists, lotus symbolizes the most exalted state of man--his head held high, pure and in the sun, his feet rooted in the world of experience.
Its mysticism may also be linked to the mild narcotic or sedative effects from flowers that are eaten, smoked or steeped in wine and drank. In addition to having an incredible list of medicinal applications from helping premature ejaculation to having anticancer properties to helping cramps and digestion, all parts of the plant are considered edible and appear widely in Asian cuisine.