The Lotus

It's a widely noted irony that the beautiful lily and lotus grow from the murky muddy bottoms of ponds. How can beauty and that sweet fragrance come from what is not beautiful and foul smelling?

So we discover that beauty is an illusion that emerges even when its substance is mud. Of course that works in reverse, when the lily decays and falls back into the mud we see that the mud is really made from what is beautiful. Lesson: things are short lived and rapidly become other things. There is no permanent substance or essence (or "what it is"), and what is desirable is always impermanent and not a fixed entity.

But the analogy is also used to encourage spiritual growth. We are born as muddy sinners and we strive to purify and flower as fragrant loti to become a blessing to the world.

How can a new born child be a muddy sinner? In modern thought we call it genetics, that the child may have a genetic predisposition to certain behaviour and illnesses. With good nurture these genes can be encouraged not to express, but its not a certain equation. Many people struggle with things that they are born with, or perhaps things they unwisely developed in themselves through mistakes and misjudgement. Take smoking addiction. Some people are more likely to become addicted than others, bit not everyone with an addictive personality will take up smoking, and even those who do smoke can turn their back on it with practice. Until we are wise we make mistakes, and lifting ourselves from the mud can be a long journey.

So it looks like we need to change and improve ourselves. Following from previous posts, is this not Adam Smith: that our lives are opportunities for improvement?

In the short term yes, but in the long term what is the goal of improvement? Do we really become "better?" and if we do "what is becoming better?"

The ultimate achievement of spiritual improvement is to realise that we never actually moved. All that growth and development was from the perspective of a false mortal self. But when we realise that this is a false mortal self then there is nothing to improve any more. Escaping that self is the final act of improvement, when we realise there was nothing to improve!

The problem initially with improvement is it can make us worse. If we get an award we can grow haughty and objectionable as a person, it can actually send us back into the mud.

A study of Western meditators revealed that in many cases meditation actually strengthens the ego. Look at me I have done lots of meditation, I am a good practitioner, I have made mental achievements, I am superior. Back into the mud we go!

Lifting ourselves out of the mud can itself be a sin. One solution is to lift other people out of the mud instead of ourselves. The Bodhisattva path. This aids realisation that its not all about "me" and is an important step in getting out of the mud. But we are still bound by the notion of individuals who need growth and progress. Initially there is the stage, where bound to the idea of individuals and growth and progress, we may resent other people being helped because we realise that we are ignoring our self. The Africans say "do not mend a man's eyes otherwise he will be covet your wife." If we ever have the idea of a "self" either in ourselves or in another then we are still anchored into the mud. Diamond Sutra is all about abandoning the idea of helping individuals: when we "help" no one is doing anything to anyone: it must always be done without even regard to what it is. "helping" is not helping, it just just doing the right thing. There is no debt.

And so the growth of a lotus is actually a very subtle thing!