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The art of Chinese Brush Painting is considered one of the five
excellences.
It is both an art form and a meditation. The process is begun with the
grinding of the inks on a stone with water to create the proper
consistency
of the black paint used for the basis of the painting. As the ink
stick which
is made from charcoal is ground against the stone, the artist has the
opportunity to center and ground him or herself while contemplating
the consistency of the ink.

Lotus Painting by Chan Ix Nan, right

Because lotuses grow out of the mud pure and clean, like morning dew
from Heaven or water in springtime from a flower creek, lotus
decorations and designs are everywhere the eye turns. Even other
flowers-like these magnolias-are piled into lotus shapes.

Chinese poets also use lotus flowers to inspire people to continue
striving through difficulties and to show their best part to the
outside world, no matter how bad the circumstances may be. This is
understood as being just like the lotus flower, bringing beauty and
light from the murky darkness at the bottom of the pond.

Another symbolic characteristic of the lotus flower leads from the
observation that the plant's stalk is easy to bend in two, but is
very hard to break because of its many strong sinuous fibres. Poets
use this to represent a close unbreakable relationship between two
lovers or the members within a family, showing that no matter how far
away they might live nothing can really separate them in heart.

In Buddhism the lotus flower symbolizes faithfulness. The golden
lotus that is mentioned in Buddhist sutras has two meanings, one is
the symbol for the achievement of enlightenment and the other points
towards a real flower which is beyond our normal perception.

The influence of a lotus flower painting is to open us up to beauty
and light. A good lotus flower painting can act as a reminder of the
miracle of beauty, light and life. This reminder, communicated on an
emotional level, is said to aid both spiritual and practical
understanding of Tao, the world and our place in it.

Chinese poets also use lotus flowers to inspire people to continue
striving through difficulties and to show their best part to the
outside world, no matter how bad the circumstances may be. This is
understood as being just like the lotus flower, bringing beauty and
light from the murky darkness at the bottom of the pond.

Lotuses are perhaps the most spectacular plants in aquatic
environments. The Chinese say that, once having seen the growing
lotus, you never forget it. The lotus flowers have color from red,
pink, pale yellow to creamy white. A separate, long, tubular stalk
supports each flower and each large round leaf.

The sacred Lotus, Nelumbo nucifera, is an extreme important spiritual
symbol in Eastern religions. It represents purity, divine wisdom, and
the individual's progress from the lowest to the highest state of
consciousness.

Seeded in muddy waters, the lotus rises above the mud and produces
beautiful and fragrant flowers. The big showy bloom may be 8-12
inches (20-30 cm) in diameter. The flowers open for just three days.
Then each petal falls silently into the water, one by one, at a short
period. The large green seed head or pod remains on the top of the
stalk for a long time, and gradually turning to dark color and ripe.
The seeds impeded in the cone-shape pod with flat surface at the top.
The pod then reverts to the water, where it floats face down,
allowing seeds to take hold in the mud. The seeds then germinate in
the following Spring and give rise to new lotus plants.

All parts of lotus are edible. The immature seeds can be eaten raw or
cooked, they have chestnut like flavor. Ripe seeds are roasted and
ground into flour, or boiled to extract oil. Lotus roots produce
starchy tubers and have the flavor of sweet potato. The young,
unrolled leaves are cooked as a vegetable.

Lotus seeds have very hard, impermeable seed coats, and can remain
viable for very long time. Sacred Lotus seeds, the most long-lived of
all angiosperm seeds, have been known to germinate after more than
400 years! American Lotus (Nelumbo lutea) can germinate after a
dormancy of 200 years, and recently, lotus seeds of 1,200 years from
China had been germinated! What's an incredible plant!

Bright blooms from the muck

"Purity, trustworthiness, the Buddha, the virtuous man: these are
what the lotus signifies," writes Huang Yung-chuan, assistant
director of the National Museum of History, in his book Chinese
Flower Arranging. Buddhism came to China in the Wei and Jin
dynasties, at which time the lotus, which had been simply a source of
food, became a symbol for purity and the subject of many poems.

"Bathing in the clear water of the spiritual pond, the lotus' roots
dig deep into the soil." For the literati, the lotus represented
distancing oneself from vulgarity. It was a metaphor that related to
contemporary utopian notions, but was surely connected as well to the
Buddhist ideal of "keeping apart from the world, like the lotus."

"My Love for the Lotus" by the Song scholar Zhou Dun-yi has exerted
an influence on the Chinese down to the present. In this essay, the
lotus is compared to a man of great virtue for being able to live in
muck without being tainted by it. Qian Zhong-shu, a Republican-era
writer, wrote that Zhou's "inspirations" stemmed from Buddhist ideas.

Buddhism explores how to transcend the troubles of human existence,
to leave behind the sea of pain, the house of fire that is human
existence. Becoming Buddha-like is the highest ideal. Out of the muck
the lotus springs forth beautiful blooms, much as Buddhas free
themselves from worldly worries. In the Middle Works of Hinayana
Sutra, the Buddha says, "In this way the human heart doesn't give
rise to evil desires or evil thoughts. It's like the blue, red and
white lotuses that grow in the water but bear no water."



Chinese literati believe that a lotus is a pure world unto itself in
which both body and soul are clean. According to the book Jian Nan
Shi Gao, when the Song dynasty poet Lu Yu was 78 years old, he once
dreamt that an ancient spoke to him: "I am the lotus scholar and
responsible for the mirror lake," he said. "But now I am leaving, and
I was wondering if you could take my place minding the moonlight,
wind and dew and protecting the lotuses?

Every month you will receive 1000 jugs of wine in payment."
Afterwards Lu couldn't forget this beautiful dream. A few years
later, when he was very ill, he had another dream in which he walked
amid 10,000 acres of lotus flowers. Lu's dreams can be said to
combine Buddhist, Confucian and Taoist elements.

Muck is a field of blessing

In comparison to the literati's notions about not getting tainted by
the mud, the Buddhist description of the lotus leaving the muck has
even broader meaning.

Mahayana Buddhism stresses finding a release from worldly affairs
while in the world, taking the path of a bodhisattva amid the five
filths of the world. The bodhisattvas take the human masses as
their "field of blessing"-the muck is luck, evil is good, pollution
is purity and no clear dichotomies can be made. Hence, Mahayana
Buddhism stresses the idea that "this flower doesn't grow in the
highlands but rather it blooms in the vile swamps." The root and
flower merge into one, in which there is no distinction between
pollution and purity.

Apart from pursuing inner cultivation, meditation and deep thought,
experiencing muck is also a form of cultivation, for it tests one's
ability to endure misfortune and to sacrifice. Only by going to hell
and being tempered by fire there, can one rise to religious
exaltation and radiate the brightest and most beautiful light.

Collectively, the numerous different descriptions of the lotus are
fitting, in that each lotus bloom is a magnificent world in itself.
It is quite natural that images of the lotus are everywhere to be
found in Buddhist lands.

In one of the Dunhuang Caves, you can find yourself surrounded on
four sides by the petals of a giant lotus decoration, in which one
peaceful Buddha after another sits in front of its own huge lotus
petal. Since lotus petals and leaves have unusual shapes, you can
always tell when a lotus flower is being depicted no matter if it has
been stretched long, pressed flat, or molded into a square. Apart
from actual representations of lotus flowers, petals and leaves, the
ways gourds, dahlias, pomegranates and a variety of other fruits were
depicted "were all adaptations and extensions of lotus designs,"
notes Lu.


White flowers from heaven

When Chan (Zen) Buddhism bloomed in China, the lotus did not lose
stature, but Buddhist art became more subdued, and the use of color
in depictions of the lotus declined. After the Song dynasty, folk
culture grabbed hold of the lotus with gusto, giving it symbolic
meaning that was no longer purely religious.

In mass-produced art works, fat babies danced while holding lotus
leaves or lotus flowers. These were used in the hope that people
would give birth to several boys in succession (a Chinese character
meaning "one after another" is a homonym for the character meaning
lotus). And the lotus leaves provide protection for goldfish under
them, which to the Chinese symbolize abundance year after year. In
the folk uses of lotus flowers it is often hard to discern whether
there is any connection to religious belief. For instance, in the
Tang dynasty one Buddhist deity was depicted as a baby holding a
lotus flower and laughing. On a festival for unmarried women on the
seventh day of the seventh lunar month, children would come out onto
the city streets and imitate him. Is this deity somehow connected to
the idea that lotuses would help mothers produce boys?

"Chinese flower arranging also has roots in the Northern Dynasties'
Buddhist 'flower offering' ceremony," writes Huang Yung-chun,
assistant director of the National Museum of History.

Down to the present, even if Chinese don't understand the Lotus Sutra
or lotus-related Zen esoterica, they will surely know that you light
lotus lanterns on the Ghost Festival and that Songzi Niangniang
allowed the Gold Boy and Jade Girl to get on a lotus and float to the
world of men. In which case it's not hard to imagine that a small
lotus pedestal can remove bad karma, direct souls of the deceased to
proceed with reincarnation, and help cultivate one's inner spirit.

Purity, not fragrance and beauty

Nitpicking botanists might note that a lot of the explanations
Buddhists have for the lotus are now far removed from the realities
of the living ecology. When the lotus flowers, its ovule, cupule and
shape are beginning to form but are not fully mature. This
entomophilous flower requires insects to gather pollen in order for
its fruit to ripen, and thus to say that it flowers while bearing
fruit is not strictly accurate. Yang Yuan-po, who has researched
water plants, says that the unusual platform-like cupule is shaped
the way it is to attract bugs to its pollen, rather than to get human
beings to imagine what it would be like to sit on it.

As for the way the lotus and the water lily close up, nimosa grass
does the same thing. Chen Chin-yuan, a graduate student in the
department of horticulture at National Taiwan University, says that
flowers close up to make it easier for the plants to control their
inner circulation of water, so as to avoid being affected by the
weather, the humidity or even being touched by people.

The Diamond Sutra urges people to "cultivate the heart of a Buddha,
by living nowhere." Hence, don't clutch tight to phenomena of this
world and to things you are not supposed to desire.

Letting go of the lotus pedestal to find enlightenment is similar to
the idea that you can only get to land by leaving your boat!



The Lotus Effect (the lotus flower's physical properties).



Author: Hans Christian Von Baeyer
January, 2000

The secret of the self-cleaning leaves of the lotus plant, like the
subtlest applications of high technology, is simplicity itself.


THE LOTUS FLOWER IS REVERED throughout the world. Its name is
actually shared by a number of different plants with blossoms of
various colors, but the most celebrated in art and literature is the
sacred white lotus of the Hindus: Nelumbo nucifera. Its huge, almond-
shaped petals form a shallow bowl around a seedpod that is vaguely
reminiscent of the nozzle of a sprinkling can. This magnificent
blossom, rising on a tall stalk from a flat base of large, round
leaves, is endowed with an exotic aura. In Buddhist tradition, lotus
blossoms mark each of the seven steps in ten directions taken,
paradoxically, by the newborn Buddha. But without a doubt the color
of the lotus--or, more properly, its utter absence of color--a
blinding whiteness that speaks of unblemished purity, underlies its
magical allure.

The lotus was an important icon in ancient Egypt, the inspiration for
the Phoenician capitals that preceded the Ionic order of design, the
sacred flower of Hindu religions and the object of the principal
mantra of Tibetan Buddhism: om mani padme hum, which means "Hail,
jewel in the lotus." Given the mechanical efficiency of prayer wheels
that symbolically repeat those words without pause, the lotus may be
the most frequently invoked plant in the world. In various parts of
the world it has been a symbol of fertility, birth, beauty, sunlight,
transcendence, sexuality and the resurrection of the dead. A twelfth-
century Sanskrit poem extols Brahma, "the lotus of whose navel forms
thus our universe." But above all, the lotus represents purity.

What an enchanting paradox, then, that the lotus grows in muddy
waters, emerging from them unblemished and untouched by pollution.

An ancient Indian text refers explicitly to that wonderful quality:

The white lotus, born in the water and grown in the water, rises
beyond the water and remains unsoiled by the water.
Thus, monks, the [Buddha], born in the world, grown up in the world,
after having conquered the world, remains unsoiled by the world.
The surface of the lotus leaf is covered with a dense layer of pointy
little moguls. The botanists had stumbled upon the secret of the
lotus. To celebrate their discovery, Barthlott coined the term lotus
effect.

To demonstrate the phenomenon dramatically, Barthlott likes to
squeeze a droplet of water-soluble liquid glue onto a lotus leaf. He
smears the droplet a little with his finger, then steps back to watch.

The glue quickly pulls itself back together, reforming the droplet,
and the droplet rolls off the leaf at a stately pace. Not even glue
can stick to an area as small as the tip of a microscopic mogul.

Just as impressive is Barthlott's demonstration of the cleaning power
of water: when a lotus leaf is covered with a dusting of fine
powdered clay, and a drop of water is added, the water rolls
downhill, gathering dust as it moves. In its wake is a long, clean
path, like the shiny trail of a snail.

SO THERE YOU HAVE IT, THE SECRET of the sacred lotus: its purity
derives from its nubbly surface. Is that all? Does the solution to
this little mystery of nature somehow diminish the spiritual value of
the sacred lotus?

For me, the opposite is true. When I see a lotus blossom now, or,
what is more likely, the leaf of a cauliflower or tulip, I marvel at
the ingenuity of nature in bringing forth, after a hundred million
years of evolution, such pristine beauty through such an exquisite
design. My awareness enhances my appreciation.

For more information on Mr. Von Baeyer's article on The Lotus Effect
visit here.