No Mud, No Lotus

Staying in the generative dark

No Mud, No Lotus

This is the most radical thing you can do,

return to your roots, stay in the muck

and mud of the pond, feeling everything.

It’s how the lotus grows, seeds germinating

underwater where others might drown,

stems curling slowly upward to reach

the surface, and its blossom opening

petal by petal as the truth spreads in us:

This is how it is now. Yet the flower finds

calm in the depths, staying immersed

in a process that could take years, until

the eventual unfolding of a self fed by

the darkness it must have cursed at first.

It is a common phrase among Buddhists—No mud, no lotus—and I have heard it said during yoga classes, meditation retreats, and mindfulness circles. Yet the truth of these words applies to people of any faith (or no faith at all), since we all face crises of spirit, times when we are tempted to give up—or invited to dig deeper. I've weathered many such periods in my own life, when the daily practices of mediation and prayer felt stale and fell away for a while, or when my writing—which I consider another necessary piece of my spiritual practice—seemed like more of a chore than the gift it usually is. What the metaphor of the lotus teaches us is that we too can grow and bloom extravagantly out of the mud and muck of confusion, even when feeling underwater. In fact, like the lotus, our souls seem to require the messiness of life in order to grow stronger and help us become just who we are. This does not mean we go about seeking more mud, or even praising it, since none of us would ever invite more confusion and fear into our lives, if we had a choice. Instead, we simply see the clumsy beauty of our struggle as nourishment for the blossoming we all seek. This may take years in the dark to happen, but the time spent there is never wasted. It will eventually open our heart, petal by petal, to the world exactly as it is, which is the root, for me, of any spiritual practice—to live daily from a place of radical acceptance, saying yes to what’s here.

Invitation for Writing & Reflection: When in a place of doubt or crisis of faith, what is the most radical, rooted thing you can do for yourself? You might work with this image of the lotus to see what resonates with your own process and practice, writing a set of instructions for yourself about how to stay in a generative darkness that we may want to curse at first.

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I know that gift-giving may be over for some of you, but signed copies of my most recent publications, Unlocking the Heart and Boxful of Poetry (all three of my recent anthologies in a gorgeous boxed set!) are still available through my favorite indie bookstore, Battenkill Books, at the links below. They'll ship to wherever you are:

Unlocking the Heart: https://www.battenkillbooks.com/book/9798887620961
Boxful of Poetry: https://www.battenkillbooks.com/book/9781635868630