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Dear Devotees,

It appears that the attachment to the Post d. 22nd Feb.'05 was not 
received. I am reproducing below the text from the file.
Dasan,
Krishnaswamy MK 
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The Lotus Flower - 
Significance as symbol explained

In Hindu/Buddhist philosophical literature, the lotus flower is a 
symbol with great significance. For example, in Sloka 10, Chapter 5 
of the Bhagavad Gita it is said:  

"One who leads his life dedicating all his actions to Brahman, 
abandoning attachments, 
is freed from bondage just as a lotus leaf remains unaffected by the 
water. 

Alan Watts, in his Essay "Seven Symbols of Life" explains the 
symbolic meaning of the Lotus flower thus:  

The Lotus figures in the art of every great civilization of Asia, and 
in the course of thousands of years has gathered to itself 
associations which, to the Western mind, are bound up with all that 
seems exotic in the life of the East. For, the lotus is a mystery?a 
perfected glory appearing out of the unknown, a flower in whose 
circular spread of petals has been seen a symbol of the Wheel of Life 
and the rays of the sun. Yet, while there is mystery in the 
perfection of its form, the greatest mystery is that such a form 
should appear out of the slime?the formless primeval morass where, in 
the earliest ages, stirred the first living creatures?the home of 
blind worms and slithering reptiles, feeding upon one another and 
begetting their kind in innumerable masses. 

This underworld of the morass has been sufficiently described in 
Kesserling's masterpiece the South American Meditations, and there is 
no need to describe it further. But what must never be forgotten is 
that this underworld still exists in the soul of man; that while his 
spirit, like the Lotus struggles towards the light, so beneath him, 
and surrounding and nourishing his roots, is the primeval slime. And 
further, below this slime is the world of minerals, the rock and ores 
descending deeper and deeper into the earth right down to that 
flaming darkness which men have imagined as Hell - From all this the 
flower gathers its nourishment while from above the sun and the rain 
bring to it the gifts of Heaven.  Both are essential to the life of 
the flower.

It might seem to the eyes of man that the lotus is no more than a 
flower, that this resplendent creation exists of itself floating 
detached and spotless above the water.  But this is illusion. For 
just as the sage may appear spotless and detached from the world, he 
is like the lotus in that he has roots in the primaeval slime?and 
knows it. Foolishly it is thought that the highest achievement of the 
human spirit is a heavenly purity detached from earth?a rootless 
flower suspended in the air and nourished wholly from above. Yet in 
the symbol of the lotus we see that there is no conflict between 
heaven and earth; above, the flower develops into the fullness of its 
glory, expanding joyfully, opening its petals in welcome to sun and 
rain, while below, its root. stretch out into the morass, welcoming 
darkness and slime as the petals welcome light and air. For the life 
of the lotus is not in the flower alone; if it were, the roots would 
shrivel and die and the flower too would sink back into the mud.  Nor 
is its life in the roots alone, for if this were so the flower would 
never raise its head above the water.

The realization of the truth contained in this symbol is the central 
problem of human life?the equal acceptance of both earth and heaven. 
Yet, remember it is the roots which accept the slime?not the flower, 
and the flower which opens itself to the sun?not the roots. The 
reverse of this would indeed be abomination and evil.  But nothing 
can be evil so long as it is in its right place, for the conflict 
between good and evil is not a conflict between heaven and earth, but 
between a right and a wrong orientation of man between the two.  For 
evil is when the flower turns and plunges into the slime, twisting up 
its roots to gesticulate meaninglessly in the light of day. Or again, 
evil is to withdraw from either the root or the flower, to try to 
deny either of the two by refusing it its right to reach out into its 
appropriate world. Thus the particular problem of modern man of the 
West is to recognize his roots. 

For hundreds of years, his peculiar interpretation of the teaching of 
the Christ, his cult of consciousness, his moralism, his belief in 
progress towards the hygienic, the individuated and the independent 
has made him forget his roots in the primeval slime. But he must 
remember that the roots are not to be recognized once more by 
searching them out with the flower; to attempt this would be to lose 
all that he has gained by his development, one-sided though it be. It 
is this folly which we see at work in the West to-day, in the growing 
obsession with the irrational force of sex, of the herd, of blood and 
violence. Yet these forces are, in themselves, as pure as any of the 
virtues, and as full of life-giving nourishment as Reason and the 
cool thought of great philosophy. For this obsession is not 
recognition. It is feeding the mouth with the contents of the bowels, 
or, conversely, filling the bowels with undigested food.

What must be done, therefore, if man is to attain a right orientation 
between heaven and earth, and a full development of both root and 
flower? How can he fulfill the Eastern precept, "Grow as the flower 
grows, at peace"? How can he give full recognition to the slime, and 
at the same time rise upwards to the sun?

In the darkness below the surface of the water lies what modern 
psychology has termed the Unconscious. A little way down it remains 
individuated, but the further it descends, the more individuals are 
lost in the mass. Thus in the slime is the world of reptiles, an ever 
coiling and uncoiling world of flux, where the individual is 
subordinated to the one aim of reproducing the species?a world of 
extreme fertility and ruthless destruction?symbolized by the circle 
snake which swallows its own tail. In the depths of the slime below 
the reptiles are even more primitive and un-individuated forms of 
life?plasmic formations wherein even the distinction between the 
sexes has not developed, formations which reproduce their kind simply 
by dividing into two. And further down, beneath the bed of decaying 
vegetable and animal matter (the death from which life arises again 
and again), is the formless substratum of the mineral world. 

These depths have their counterpart in the soul of man, for his 
Unconscious sinks beyond the personal and the chain of his past lives 
and the lives of his forefathers, to the race, to the animal, 
vegetable and mineral worlds. Here lies hidden the memory of the 
whole Universe, and in these unconscious depths every man has his 
roots. From them he derives his life just as much as from the 
conscious world above the water. And by accepting them, he transmutes 
the life of the slime into the glory of the flower. Therefore man 
must learn to recognize his foundation, to accept the primeval slime 
as part of his nature?nay more, to affirm and welcome it with his 
roots, stretching them down deeper and deeper into the earth.

For as men we cannot deny that we came into the world with blood and 
pain, that the powerful reproductive urge symbolized by the reptile 
stirs within us, that we have bowels as well as brains, that our life 
depends alike on growth and decay, and that what we have been 
accustomed to regard as dirt, violence and pain is an essential part 
of our nature. This is the meaning of the Resurrection, that life 
comes forth out of death and decay, just as the fruit must rot for 
the seed to grow into the tree.

Therefore nothing is to be gained by trying to escape from the 
primeval slime; without it we should die, while in truth it is no 
evil, Indeed, the humility of the sage is his capacity to accept the 
lowliest of things, to find goodness in slime. Yet it is strange that 
this should have been perverted into the false humility of the 
ascetic who rejoices in the dirt on the outside of his body, for this 
again is obsession, it is making the flower descend to the root.

Some will ask if this is not a ghastly life where the most gorgeous 
of flowers depends on slime, where growth can only be had at the 
expense of decay, where great achievements of the human spirit have 
their roots in the darkness and "depraved" irrationality of the 
Unconscious. Indeed, there are those who are so revolted by this life 
that they deny both flower and root, growth and decay, light and 
darkness, conscious and unconscious?hating both. 

But their attitude is false, for they do not really hate both; they 
hate the dark side and would like to have the light, could it be had 
without darkness. When they speak of the vanity of life we must 
remind ourselves of the story of the sour grapes; they would not call 
it vain if it could be had without death. Yet nothing is to be 
achieved by revulsion and denial, not only because the attitude is 
fundamentally false, but because the denial of a thing does not make 
one free of it. Paradoxically, hatred binds one to the thing one 
hates, for if anything has enough power over a man to make him hate 
it, to that extent he is bound and conditioned by it. But while 
hatred is extracted, love is given. Therefore, freedom comes not 
through hatred and denial, but through love and affirmation. "Love" 
is not meant in the sense of "like" as opposed to dislike, for one 
may love without liking; the two are on different planes. To love 
both the root and the flower, earth and heaven, slime and air, death 
and life is not merely to like decay because it makes possible 
growth; it is to bring the two together into an inseparable unity and 
to become one with it by a complete acceptance until, beholding it, 
man can make to himself that tremendous affirmation: Tat tvam asi ?
That art thou!                 by ALAN WATTS
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From: "M.K. Krishnaswamy" <krishnaswamy@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <Oppiliappan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Subject: Lotus & Symmetry
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2005 08:35:26 -0800

Dear Devotees,

The posting on Lotus and Symmetry reminded me of another article by 
Alan Watts (the well-known Zen scholar) on the Lotus Flower which is  
considered all over the East as a symbol. I am attaching the web-file 
of Watts' essay and also adding it in the Files section of the 
Oppiliappan List for the information of Members. An extract:
  "The realization of the truth contained in this symbol is the 
central problem of human life-the equal acceptance of both earth and 
heaven. Yet remember it is the roots which accept the slime-not the 
flower, and the flower which opens itself to the sun-not the roots."

  "... we cannot deny that we came into the world with blood and 
pain, that the powerful reproductive urge symbolized by the reptile 
stirs within us, that we have bowels as well as brains, that our life 
depends alike on growth and decay, and that what we have been 
accustomed to regard as dirt, violence and pain is an essential part 
of our nature."

Dasan
Krishnaswamy MK  






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