lotus flower

I am sitting by a pond and in the pond are many lotus flowers, fully open in the morning sun. Such beautiful flowers, they naturally draw the attention and hold it so that we sink effortlessly into meditation.

The lotus flower is, of course, a well-known symbol for enlightenment. You may already be familiar with this symbolism, but in case by chance it is new to you, I will say a few words about it. The lotus flower grows in ponds and it is rooted in the mud at the bottom of the pond. It is from this mud that the flower grows. So the lotus flower is not just a beautiful thing, but it represents this transformation of mud into a flower. It is a miracle, is it not: this brown-grey sludge can turn into the whites and pinks and yellows of the lotus flower, the ugliness of mud turning into the beauty of the flower.

And so it is with our own transformation into a buddha. That enlightenment comes from our own mud: all the ugliness within us that we tend to fight against or deny, suppress, struggle against for years, not wanting that mud to be there, feeling that we should be clean, living with this super ego – the voice of conscience – always telling us what we should be and condemning ourself for what we are, for all the slime and mud that constitutes a human being.

The spiritual journey is about becoming a flower, opening: opening to the beauty that sits within us as a potential, as a seed. But here is the great paradox, one that is very important to understand: that seed can only germinate, it can only grow and blossom – we can only find liberation – because of the mud, because of the slime, because of all of those negative aspects of our being, that our voice of conscience says is wrong. On the spiritual path, there is nothing wrong. The mud and the slime is the fuel, the nutrient that allows our seed to grow. Without that slime, no flower will come. We will remain a dried up seed. We will never fulfil our potential. But once enough dirt has accumulated, then we begin to grow. That little seed within us erupts and a long stem reaches upwards towards the air, towards the sky, towards the sun. Upon breaking through that surface, our flower begins to open.

In the symbolism of the east, the lotus flower is given one thousand petals, each one opening slowly, in turn, and as every petal opens, we feel a liberation. Often times we will feel that we have flowered completely, but no, there are more petals to open. There is more to come. Eventually, called by the noon day sun of god, our lotus flower is fully open, and we have realised our true nature. We have become a buddha once more.