Lotus & Symmetry

[Guest guest]

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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"M.K. Krishnaswamy" <krishnaswamy

<Oppiliappan>

 

Lotus & Symmetry

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