The lotus is the chief symbol of beauty, success and fertility. According to Hinduism, inside every human inhabiting the earth is the spirit of the holy lotus. It symbolizes eternity, purity and religion and is usually used as a symbol of life, fertility, and ever-renewing youth and to explain feminine beauty, particularly the eyes.
One of the most general metaphysical analogies compares the lotus' perennial rise to faultless beauty from a miry situation to the development of man's consciousness--from instinctive impulses to religious liberation. In the Bhagavad Gita, man is adjured to be like the lotus--he should work without connection, dedicating his events to God--untouched by sin like water on a lotus leaf and the beautiful flower standing lofty above the mud and water.
In the postures of hatha yoga, the lotus location, padmasana, is adopted by those striving to achieve the chief level of awareness, which itself is found in the thousand-petalled lotus chakra at the top of the head. For Buddhists, lotus represent the most exalted state of man--his head held high, pure and undefiled in the sun, his feet rooted in the world of experience.
There is a story that it arose from the navel of God Vishnu, and at the center of the flower sat Brahma. Brahma (the Creator), Vishnu (the Protector) and Siva (the Merger) are associated with this plant. There are also accounts of the world born throughout a "Golden Lotus" and
Padmakalpa, the Lotus Age in the Padmapurana (678 ce).
Trilok Chandra Majupuria of Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, explains in Religious and Useful Plants of Nepal and India (1989, M. Gupta, Lashkar, India), "The Taittiriya Brahmana describes how Prajapati, desiring to progress the universe, which was then fluid, saw a lotus-leaf, pushkara parna, coming out of water. It is explain that when divine life-substance was about to put forth the universe, the cosmic waters grow a thousand-petalled lotus flower of pure gold, healthy like the sun. This was careful to be a doorway, or an opening of the mouth of the womb of the universe.
Hindu texts explain that water represents the procreative aspect of the Absolute, and the cosmic lotus, the generative. Thus, lotus is the first product of the inspired principle." The role of Lord Brahma was to re-create the universe behind the huge flood on this planet. In arrange to make the universe; He used the special parts of the lotus plant.
Goddess Lakshmi, patron of wealth and good fortune, sits on a completely bloomed pink lotus as her great seat and holds a lotus in her right hand. It is as well mentioned in the Mahabharata that Lakshmi emerged from a lotus which grow from the forehead of Lord Vishnu, and a garland of 108 lotus seeds is today used for the worship of Lakshmi.
The Goddess of Power, Durga, was formed by Lord Siva to fight demons and was decorated with a garland of lotus flowers by Varuna. Goddess of knowledge, Saraswati is connected with the white Lotus. And almost every God and Goddess of Hinduism--Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, Lakshmi, Saraswati, Parvati, Durga, Agni, Ganesha, Rama and Surya--are normally shown sitting on the lotus, often holding a lotus flower in their hand. The lotus which serves thus as the place of the Deity, suggesting their divinity and purity, is called padmasana or kamalasana.
One of the most general metaphysical analogies compares the lotus' perennial rise to faultless beauty from a miry situation to the development of man's consciousness--from instinctive impulses to religious liberation. In the Bhagavad Gita, man is adjured to be like the lotus--he should work without connection, dedicating his events to God--untouched by sin like water on a lotus leaf and the beautiful flower standing lofty above the mud and water.
In the postures of hatha yoga, the lotus location, padmasana, is adopted by those striving to achieve the chief level of awareness, which itself is found in the thousand-petalled lotus chakra at the top of the head. For Buddhists, lotus represent the most exalted state of man--his head held high, pure and undefiled in the sun, his feet rooted in the world of experience.
There is a story that it arose from the navel of God Vishnu, and at the center of the flower sat Brahma. Brahma (the Creator), Vishnu (the Protector) and Siva (the Merger) are associated with this plant. There are also accounts of the world born throughout a "Golden Lotus" and
Padmakalpa, the Lotus Age in the Padmapurana (678 ce).
Trilok Chandra Majupuria of Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, explains in Religious and Useful Plants of Nepal and India (1989, M. Gupta, Lashkar, India), "The Taittiriya Brahmana describes how Prajapati, desiring to progress the universe, which was then fluid, saw a lotus-leaf, pushkara parna, coming out of water. It is explain that when divine life-substance was about to put forth the universe, the cosmic waters grow a thousand-petalled lotus flower of pure gold, healthy like the sun. This was careful to be a doorway, or an opening of the mouth of the womb of the universe.
Hindu texts explain that water represents the procreative aspect of the Absolute, and the cosmic lotus, the generative. Thus, lotus is the first product of the inspired principle." The role of Lord Brahma was to re-create the universe behind the huge flood on this planet. In arrange to make the universe; He used the special parts of the lotus plant.
Goddess Lakshmi, patron of wealth and good fortune, sits on a completely bloomed pink lotus as her great seat and holds a lotus in her right hand. It is as well mentioned in the Mahabharata that Lakshmi emerged from a lotus which grow from the forehead of Lord Vishnu, and a garland of 108 lotus seeds is today used for the worship of Lakshmi.
The Goddess of Power, Durga, was formed by Lord Siva to fight demons and was decorated with a garland of lotus flowers by Varuna. Goddess of knowledge, Saraswati is connected with the white Lotus. And almost every God and Goddess of Hinduism--Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, Lakshmi, Saraswati, Parvati, Durga, Agni, Ganesha, Rama and Surya--are normally shown sitting on the lotus, often holding a lotus flower in their hand. The lotus which serves thus as the place of the Deity, suggesting their divinity and purity, is called padmasana or kamalasana.