Lotus Blossoms

Our day off, so we headed up to Sawara to see the Water Garden there with a neighbour of ours. This botanical garden is a couple of miles north of the Tone River in a vast area of lowland rice fields. Even a hundred years ago it was inpenetrable esturial swamp, the hard labour needed to first cultivate this land is unimaginable. It reminds me a bit of the English Fens but it is infinitely sweatier!


We hoped to catch the lotuses in the Graden on a good day and we weren't disappointed. Nearly thirty degrees and humidity so high that it was drizzling slightly. It was just what lotus flowers love - if not photographers. A bit like being hit with a pillow that has just been soaked in a warm bath. OK if you relax - and like that sort of thing.

Here are just a few of today's images. In Buddhism we think of the life of the lotus as teaching. It's a plant that grows in murky and ordinary water, it's roots are nourished deep in the black mud beneath the pond. But it rises out of that (not 'above it'!) to blossom into something of perfect beauty. Yet root and flower are the same life. There are lotuses in real life everywhere around us eh?


This morning I found myself remembering the short scripture we say after meals

The universe is as the boundless sky
As lotus blossoms above unclean water;
Pure and beyond the world is the Buddha Nature of the trainee;
O Holy Buddha we take refuge in Thee.