January reflections 🍵✨💚🏞️ What a wonderful start to the year. It kicked off with a Chakai I performed for a beautiful wedding, which I was so nervous about! I met with tea friends from across the globe, shared tea with soul friends in the mountains next to waterfalls, launched Matcha at .nova.cafe in Noordhoek, maintained a dedicated daily practice often accompanied by two fluffy masters, deepened my philosophy pursuits and have taken on board exciting new consulting clients. The best is yet to come! Here’s to 2026! 🌈🦄
27/01/2026
Tea is a practice of simplicity and beauty that serves as a vessel to the profound. Through the sharing of tea, people are brought together in this pursuit. The Way of Tea is about returning to what is already inherent, achieved through the magnificence of century-old tea ceremonies.
I invite guests to join me for a Gongfu tea ceremony in a serene sanctuary nestled in the trees on the 15th February at the Organic Magic Project in Hout Bay.
15/01/2026
“One could not awaken her, the other could.
Neither are good actors.
One wears the mask of god, one a devil’s mask.
Had both failed, the drama would still be a comedy.”
Meeting truth is absolution.
This Zen Koan speaks to true freedom. The mask-wearing god is the sickness of being trapped in holiness. The mask-wearing devil is the sickness of being trapped in delusion. Neither are good actors because both are pretending, caught in duality, performing roles instead of attaining true wisdom and freedom. If both roles collapse by seeing through holiness and delusion, the play is seen for what it is: a farce. The comedy is the liberation beyond performative roles and clinging. Through truth, we are absolved, we are free.
A rainbow does not exist in the light nor in the droplets alone. It exists in the meeting, in the perspective of the observer who stands in the right alignment of sun and rain. Truth, like a rainbow, is not an object to be grasped. It is a revelation of perfect, transient alignment. To meet it is to be in that alignment, where all conditions are just so, and the drama of separation is seen through. Absolution is simply the realisation that you are not, and never were, the mask.
Be the clear sky, the light, the rain, and the seeing.
08/01/2026
“In the liquid amber within the ivory porcelain, the initiated may touch the sweet reticence of Confucius, the piquancy of Laotse, and the ethereal aroma of Sakyamuni himself.”
~ The Book of Tea by Okakura Kakuzō 1906.
01/01/2026
A new year begins. The intentional opportunity is to empty our cup of all the illusions of ourselves, others and the world, that was so intensely challenged in 2025. We can now allow 2026 to express its full potential, free of distortion.
The Zen master pours tea for the scholar. He fills the cup and keeps pouring. The tea spills over. “Stop,” the scholar says, “the cup is full.” “You are like this cup,” the master replies. “How can I show you Zen unless you first empty it?”
This classic Zen teaching originates from core Buddhist insight: nothing exists independently. Everything, from a teacup to a thought, arises only through a network of causes and conditions. Wisdom is not accessible when the cup is already full. It requires space, receptivity and the right conditions to emerge. The scholar’s mind, shaped by habit and opinion, is already full; his views leave no room for anything new to enter, or for change to occur. The overflowing cup illustrates this directly: when the conditions are obstructed, things cannot move. Only when the cup is emptied by the mind releasing distortions and seeing things as they are, can wisdom arise and express itself.
You are not who you were a moment ago: the conditions have already changed. Release that version, that opinion, that view. Let the cup receive what is real.
The full cup is the ego’s fortress. When we “know,” we stop truly seeing. An empty cup is openness, curiosity, and beginner’s mind. It is the state from which correct perception, right action, compassion and unbound wisdom arise.
Emptiness and fullness are inseparable. The moment of true emptiness is also the moment of perfect fullness. The mind emptied is the mind that apprehends interdependence, impermanence, and thus align with the undercurrent of life.
2026 begins with an empty cup, clear, unobstructed, sovereign.
Happy New Year from my teacup to yours 🍵🤍🐴
📸
23/12/2025
Circa December 2010, at the beginning of an era. This first Lady Bonin’s Tea Caravan photograph by the brilliant . This captures me as I began to embody an unwavering commitment to potentiality, evolution, and becoming a living response to the imbalances I perceived in the world. I was driven by joy, creative curiosity, and the need to express it through form. I wanted to understand myself in relation to the world, and the world as it reflects back to me.
Within the structure of a business, I sought to explore whether it was possible to actively challenge what felt fundamentally discordant and create space for its balancing opposite. To test how far the pendulum could swing, and to see what could emerge when values, creativity, authenticity, and integrity were held at the centre of a commercial system.
Tea became a mirror and facilitator of these intentions. Drinking tea ritualistically throughout the day shifted me, both through its physiological effects and through what tea demands to prepare, serve, and share: honouring the other, integrating with nature, and developing oneself constantly. This insight shaped my approach to the business and the way it evolved.
Losing the business was both feared and met with peace. From the outset, the aim was to align values with profit, proving that ethical foundations need not be sacrificed for commercial success. I pioneered regenerative tea agriculture in the mainstream, created market linkages for smallholder farmers, and supported women in agriculture. Most importantly I benefit tea drinkers and be a custodian of ancient elixirs. As investment pressures mounted and priorities diverged, my integrity was tested. The choice was clear: compromise those principles, or walk away nine years later without a cent.
To give in for profit would have contradicted the journey itself, inseparable from the practice of tea, its philosophies, and the honouring of its lineage.
15 years after this photo, I find myself once again looking to the horizon of infinite possibilities. Today, I pay homage to the era that was, and welcome the one unfolding.
18/12/2025
One evening in 2012 while diving down a philosophical rabbit hole, I by divine chance stumbled across a blog with selected excerpts of Rikyū Hyakushu, or “Rikyū’s Hundred Poems of Chanoyu”.
As I read the words, tears spontaneously emerged. I felt an infallible remembrance, nostalgia and
You see, I had been having these remarkable experiences with tea, and reading those words encapsulated things I had not been able to define, or yet express.
I needed to learn more. I needed to learn the practice of Chanoyu so that I could learn from this Master who spoke my heart.
The universe conspired. Earlier that year I received a free return ticket anywhere in the world from a botched flight. In that moment, I decided to use it to travel to Japan, to the source, to find myself a tea master.
Japan had other ideas. I arrived mid-December, and there was not a tea master in sight. This was on purpose. I had to first learn about the seasons, impermanence, simplicity, The Lotus sutra, what it is to be a guest, benevolence, artistry, The Way, flowing with the inherent current of life. The ever-generous characters in my journey.
During those 6 weeks, I had no plan. I walked out the door every day and picked a direction. Following a strange unnamable call. I found Yugen, “Experiencing the hidden depth of the world through fleeting, subtle moments.” And thus began my practice of Chanoyu, and therefore Matcha.
On this same trip, through friend I made, I found my Sensei, whom I study with today.
The journey of tea is an undeniable calling to understanding and service. When you follow the leaves, the path unfolds one bowl at a time.
Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Jess Bonin - Tea Specialist posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Lady Bonin’s Tea is a South African based company that sources, blends, packages and distributes full leaf teas, either loose or in biodegradable tea bags.
The teas and herbals are sourced locally and internationally from small-scale, social and environmentally driven farms that are organic wherever possible, and that go beyond organic into Wild and Biodiverse. The predominantly organic herb, spice, fruit and floral ingredients are 100% real, with no additives, creating unique blends that are a premium quality and deep flavour cascades. The company is Organic and Halaal certified.
Founded in 2010 by Jessica Bonin, aka Lady Bonin, out of a 1975 Jurgens Caravan selling take-away tea at markets, festivals and private functions. It was South Africa’s first Food Truck and the worlds first Tea Caravan! Lady Bonin’s Tea was selling take away tea before Starbucks!
Today, Lady Bonin’s Tea has its own in-house production facility where all product development, blending, packaging and distribution occur. Once the teas are blended, they are packaged under the Lady Bonin’s Tea brand and distributed to various retail outlets, through online avenues, to restaurants and hotels. We are slowly tapping into export markets.
Lady Bonin’s Tea opened South Africa’s very first Tea Bar in 2016. It is a unique concept that takes every way you can enjoy coffee and replaces it with tea. Why does coffee get to have all the fun? The flavours and blends are infinite from frappes to lattes, chinos and even traditional teas. Adjoining the Tea Bar is a traditional tea ceremony room where unique teas and traditional ceremonies from around the world can be enjoyed.
In 2015 Lady Bonin’s Tea took part in a Business Incubator program focusing on Impact Business. At the end of the incubator a pitch deck was held to raise funding and select a winner for the incubator. Lady Bonin’s Tea won, securing its first round of funding and leading to its now partners, Hivos Food and Lifestyle Fund.
