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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