Sacred Lotus        

This sacred lotus, unlike the royal rose, is not in the stately gardens of the affluent to be cared, watered, pruned and pampered and sung to high heavens. It finds birth in the marshy bog of nature’s sewers, amongst noxious weeds and poisonous reeds. It must struggle for sheer survival in the dark, murky, stagnant waters of earth’s unspeakable netherworld. But even in that gutters amidst the wretched and the depraved, the lotus is looking up at the sun.

Yet, with her roots tenaciously embedded in her muddy bed, she is no pushover. The toughness of her resilience as she fights for space in the stiffing stillness of her seemingly perennial pond of despair. If hope that come to all never comes to her at that exacting hour of her tender days when she needs it, she transcends the injustice of her birth. She rises above the lowly station in the watery ghetto that she was condemned to live in and die.

But she’s made of stronger stuff and the mettle of her stem, having undergone the submerged vortex, sees her through. Whilst her inferior mud mates, content to languidly float upon the water, she soars over the water mark to greet the inviting sun above.

In Sri Lanka some people believe that she is performing her suriya namaskaraya for three days, her worship to the Sun God., and will unfurl her many splendored pinkish petals one by one in his honor and before his radiant eyes. Touched by his warming rays and caressed by nature’s gentle breeze, she will open up her folded bud to reveal to heaven and earth, the divine beauteous blossoms that bloomed from below.

On the fourth day she will reveal her innermost soul and bask in beauty, bathed in the sun’s spotlight blazoning her loveliness. Her petals will gradually draw back pushing forth the yellow pod within her that encases her seeds. She will generate her own heat, so that when she blossoms her petals will be 30 centigrade whilst around her the air may even be only 10 C. The heat she expels creates an aroma, which draws bees and insects to her inner core to drink her nectar and feed on her pollen. In so doing she becomes a benefactor of nature, providing all creatures small and microscopic the where withal they need to eat, mat, live and propagate.  

Then her autumn dawns and its melancholic tinge brushes her petals grace, heralding the onset of her winter days. One by one, they wither and fall and she herself arches toward the waters to shed her seeds, to sow the nelums of the future, to procreate her species. Then with one last sad sigh at the inevitable cycle of life in this cruel world, she bids the sun farewell and droops to die in the watery grave that was one her cradle.