The lotus flower, a symbol of awakening in Buddhist and other spiritual traditions, blooms in the muckiest, muddiest swamps.
- Its roots begin under the swamp water and its buds reach their way to the surface where they burst forth into stunning pink or white flowers.
- If you want the beauty of the lotus flower, there is no getting around the mud.
What’s your mud right now? What is your lotus?
- Our task, is to get to know the muck, both personally and socially.
- Go around with a flashlight, see and name its parts.
- We have to breathe through the pain, acknowledge our hearts’ longings, and understand that without delving into the mud, we can’t have the lotus.
- This muck IS our path. Hope and joy and patience and fortitude are born from opening our heart to the struggle.
- It may knock us down, but the more we resist or judge or hate on it or ourselves, the more mired in it we become.
Instead, we can face the mud with a brave heart. We can commit ourselves to keep showing up, even if we don’t want to, with more kindness, more acceptance, more love.
- “No mud, no lotus” can be a reminder, helping us to see the transformational possibilities of suffering and the possibilities of the lotus flowers, just waiting to bloom.
Re-source: Reevaluate
The thing about desires is that they can’t be finger-wagged away. They can’t be compared away. They cannot even be meditated away.
- Accepting these things– although inconvenient for our self-conception – is the only way to freedom.
- No mud, no lotus.
What is the lotus in your situation?
It isn’t necessarily an immediate change of circumstance -- though that would be nice.
"My lotus is a calm that arrives when I acknowledge how I feel and what I want, even if it is not immediately possible to get it. The lotus is also forgiving myself for wanting things to be different than how they are."
The funny thing is that when we can really face the shame and bring that level of inner kindness to it, something interesting happens.
- We find we have a little more space, a little more patience, and feel more motivation and energy to understand and change - within and without.
craving and resource from Ten Percent Happier - "No Mud, No Lotus" by Yael Shy
