Lotus Flower

growing from cosmic waters, 90 growing from Vishnu's navel, 5, 17 in pre-Aryan times, 90, 96 is the Earth Goddess, 52 personified as Mother Goddess, 91 put forth by Vishnu, 51 Lotus Goddess (Lakṣmī-Śrī, Padmā): history and symbolism of, 90–102

Zimmer's index entry for the lotus constitutes a systematic mapping of the symbol's mythological genealogy — cosmic waters, Vishnu's navel, earth goddess, Mother Goddess — establishing the full range of the symbol's Indian meanings.

Zimmer, Heinrich, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, 1946thesis

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The Buddha sitting in the lotus is shown as the germinating god. It is the god in his rising, the same symbol as Ra the falcon, or the phoenix rising from the nest, or Mithras in the tree-top, or the Horus-child in the lotus. They are all symbolizations of the status nascendi in the seeding-place of the matrix.

Jung identifies the lotus as a universal mandala image of the status nascendi, the divine principle emerging into consciousness from its generative matrix, cross-culturally equivalent to the phoenix, Horus, Ra, and Mithras.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1959thesis

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this goddess Padmā, or Lotus, stands above or is seated upon a lotus. She is associated with this flower as invariably as is Vishnu with the Milky Ocean. The goddess 'to whom the lotus is dear' (padmapriyā) is among the principal figures sculptured on the richly decorated gates and railings of the earliest Buddhist stūpas

Zimmer demonstrates the lotus's ancient and persistent identification with the goddess Padmā-Lakṣmī, spanning from pre-Buddhist stūpa sculpture to the Hindu theological tradition, where it functions as her invariable attribute.

Zimmer, Heinrich, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, 1946thesis

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the lotus of Amida himself is symbolic of his own Buddhahood. However, in the beautiful little Japanese shrine opposite we note behind Amida's head a second lotus — the sun; as Dr. Sherman E. Lee has remarked: 'the equation — lotus equals sun — is one which the beginning student of Far Eastern iconography learns first.'

Campbell articulates the foundational Far Eastern iconographic equation of lotus with sun, linking macrocosmic solar energy to the microcosmic lotus of the heart as articulated in the Maitri Upanishad.

Campbell, Joseph, The Mythic Image, 1974thesis

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our goddess with the lotus in her hair. She exhibits her breasts with the familiar maternal gesture; they are the source of the abundant milk that gives life to the universe. And so now it appears that though the earliest literary evidence of the existence of the goddess Lotus-Śrī-Lakṣmī is a late and apocryphal hymn attached to the Aryan corpus of the Rig Veda, this mother of the world was actually supreme in India

Zimmer pushes the lotus goddess's antiquity beyond Aryan textual records into the Indus Valley civilization, arguing that Lotus-Śrī-Lakṣmī as cosmic mother preceded the Vedic literary tradition.

Zimmer, Heinrich, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, 1946thesis

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a kingly figure, clothed in royal guise, wearing a jeweled crown and bearing in hand a lotus symbolic of the world itself. Addressing himself to the wo

Campbell identifies the Bodhisattva's lotus as the emblem of Mahāyāna's revolutionary reorientation — from monastic renunciation to compassionate worldly engagement — making the lotus a sign of enlightened immanence rather than withdrawal.

Campbell, Joseph, Myths to Live By, 1972thesis

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A manuscript appears on the lotus beside the image of Prajñā-Pāramitā. Brahma, the four-headed spiritual demiurge, is often represented with manuscripts of the Holy Vedas in his hands; the so-called 'Prajñā-Pāramitā Texts' are the corresponding literary manifestation of the transcendent wisdom of the Buddha.

Zimmer shows how the lotus functions as the pedestal of transcendent wisdom itself (Prajñā-Pāramitā), linking the symbol to the very vehicle of Buddhist enlightenment literature.

Zimmer, Heinrich, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, 1946supporting

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In the midst of each lake there are sixty millions of lotus-flowers, made of seven jewels; all the flowers are perfectly round and exactly equal in circumference. … The water of jewels flows amidst the flowers and … the sound of the streaming water … proclaims all the perfect virtues pāramitās.

Jung cites the Amitāyus meditation scripture's paradisiacal vision of jeweled lotus-flowers as the landscape of the Fifth Meditation, situating the lotus within yogic concentration practice leading toward samādhi.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychology and Religion: West and East, 1958supporting

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He will, while dying, see a golden lotus-flower like the disc of the sun appearing before his eyes; in a moment he will be born in the World of Highest Happiness.

Jung records the Pure Land text's vision of the dying practitioner beholding a solar golden lotus flower, making the lotus the threshold image of death, rebirth, and soteriological fulfillment.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychology and Religion: West and East, 1958supporting

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whose emblem is the fully opened lotus-blossom (padma). The remaining five classes of consciousness … become the means or tools of the Bodhisattva life, a life dedicated to the realization of Enlightenment, in which actions and motives are no more ego-centric

Govinda assigns the fully opened lotus-blossom (padma) as the emblem of the Distinguishing Wisdom of inner vision in Tibetan mysticism, directly linking the flower to the dhyāna state and selfless Bodhisattva consciousness.

Govinda, Lama Anagarika, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, 1960supporting

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The Great Guru wears as his head-dress what Tantrics call the lotus-cap. The crescent moon and the sun, on the front of it, signify, as does the lotus-cap itself, that he is crowned with all initiatory powers.

Evans-Wentz establishes the lotus-cap of the Tantric Guru as a sign of initiatory completeness, with the solar and lunar emblems upon it confirming the lotus as the crown of spiritual authority in Tibetan tradition.

Evans-Wentz, W. Y., The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation, 1954supporting

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Then the King severed the lotus blossom from its stem and lifted it up with the child sitting therein and with the minister set out for the palace. The cranes and the wild ducks were overwhelmed with grief at the loss of the child.

Evans-Wentz's narrative of Padmasambhava's miraculous birth on a lotus in a lake — the child enthroned within the flower — enacts the status nascendi motif of the divine child born from the lotus of the waters.

Evans-Wentz, W. Y., The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation, 1954supporting

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there is the Purusha in the lotus of the heart which opens upward all our powers and the Purusha in the thousand-petalled lotus whence descend through the thought and will, opening the third eye in us, the lightnings of vision and the fire of the divine energy.

Aurobindo maps two lotus centres — the heart lotus and the thousand-petalled crown lotus — as sites of the Purusha's interior self-revelation, integrating the symbol into his yogic psychology of spiritual transformation.

Aurobindo, Sri, The Synthesis of Yoga, 1948supporting

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to that in the Buddha image where the two supporting lotuses, upright and inverted, come together. Also in the hand posture of the Adi Buddha himself a simpler, stronger statement is made of the same mystery — in the way, however, not of reflection but of absorption.

Campbell interprets the paired upright and inverted lotuses supporting the Adi Buddha as a visual statement of nonduality — the spiritual and material worlds meeting in a single esoteric gesture.

Campbell, Joseph, The Mythic Image, 1974supporting

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Here Kwan-yin is the goddess who 'hears the cry of the world' and sacrifices her Buddha-hood for the sake of the suffering world; she is the Great Mother in her character of loving S

Neumann reads Kwan-yin — the lotus-bearing bodhisattva — as the Great Mother archetype's manifestation within Buddhism, showing how the matriarchal stratum reasserts itself even within traditions initially hostile to it.

Neumann, Erich, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype, 1955supporting

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Stage and throne have been established. Now the mind is to see Amitāyus. And as to the nature of that Buddha, let the following be heard. Śākyamuni speaks. 'Every Buddha Thus Come [tathāgata] is one whose spiritual body is itself the inhabiting principle of nature [dharmadhātu-kāya].'

Campbell's presentation of the jeweled flowery throne meditation establishes the visionary contemplative context in which the lotus throne is the prepared ground for perceiving the Buddha's dharmadhātu body.

Campbell, Joseph, Oriental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume II, 1962aside

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lōtárion 'lotus flower' (medic.), lōtaúlētēs 'flute player' … ETYM A Mediterranean word. Acc. to Lewy 1895: 46, it was borrowed from Hebr. lōt 'ἀστάκτη, oil of myrrh'

Beekes's etymological note traces the Greek word for lotus flower to a Mediterranean loan word possibly related to the Hebrew lōt, providing the philological substrate for the term's cross-cultural circulation.

Beekes, Robert, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010aside

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