CHAPTER XIV
THE LOTUS
The “time of the lotus” is suggestive of the damp hot August days when from earliest dawn the cicadas will be singing, if their discordant noise can be described as song, and the croaking of the frogs day and night, makes one wonder at last whether frogs never grow hoarse, or cicadas never tire of singing. From the last weeks in July till the first weeks of September the lotus will be blooming bravely, undaunted by the sun’s fierce rays; and the first breath of autumn, which brings new life and energy to a human being after the heat of the summer, will mean death to the lotus. Truly it is a beautiful flower this flower of Buddha, as from its close association with the Buddhist religion it seems essentially to belong to Buddha. The colossal figures known as the Dai butsu at Kamakura and Nara sit in immovable calm as
LOTUS AT KODAIJI
though drawing inspiration from the bronze lotus before them; the silence of their souls is the silence of the flowers, and the shape of the open blooms in the sunlight is the symbol of Buddha’s enlightenment. Every little idol of Buddha, be it in the family shrine or grand and stately temple, sits upon a lotus throne; the temples are all decorated with carved lotus or the freshly cut flowers in their season; gold and silver paper lotus are carried at funerals; tombstones are often set upon a stone base in the form of a lotus flower, and lotus beds are planted near shrines. The mighty feudal lord Iyeyasu sleeps in the silence of Nikko’s cryptomerias, hearing only once in a while the long sad cry of a great bell, and before him as his only companions are the eternally same bronze lotus flowers. So not only is the lotus the especial flower of Buddha, but it is also regarded as the flower of death, and for that reason it is disliked as a decoration for any occasion of rejoicing.
There is no more beautiful sight than a lotus bed at the dawn of a hot August day. Stately and yet tender is the beauty of the lotus blossom, the great buds opening with a noise which is indescribable to one who has not heard it; and how quickly the delicate pink or white petals unfurl, as though hastening to make the most of their short life, for before the overpowering heat of the August noonday the flower closes, to open once more on the morrow and then die a graceful death; the petals dropping one by one, but still retaining all the freshness of their colour, and then nothing will be left but the great seed pod, very beautiful in itself, but not as beautiful as the great bluish-green leaves studded with dewdrops, which seem to reflect every passing cloud. For the beauty of the lotus lies not only in its flowers; you will begin to see the beauty of the plant even when the tender young leaves peep out shyly upon the surface of a pond in early June; their colour is dark brown, and the Japanese call them zeniba from their resemblance to the shape of copper money. Then day by day the leaves will spread and float out as a spirit upon the water, gradually the stalks grow and they will get higher and higher, their broad curling surfaces losing the bronze colour and turning to every shade of soft green and deep emerald; and so through all the scorching summer days they remain fresh and cool to look upon, until in October they begin to flag, but they will be beautiful even in death. The stalks then seem too weak to carry their burden any longer, and suddenly, even as one