The Daily Bucket–The Mystery of the Buddha Peace Lotuses

Thousands of years ago, magic was afoot.  Gods and goddess walked the earth in human form.

Everywhere Buddha walked 2500 years ago, lotuses sprouted in his footsteps. Period art depicts Buddha’s birth taking place within a lotus flower.

What if folks had gathered up the lotuses from the Buddha’s footsteps and transplanted the flowers into a ravine that surrounded their own Lotus Flower Kingdom? They could divert a stream, and convert the ravine into a moat, crowded with lovely lotus flowers.

Invading armies would camp by the lotus moat, preparing to invade.  But the mystical prettiness and sweet scent of the Buddha’s lotuses would remove aggressive thoughts from the invaders. The lotuses are also tasty!

The Lotus Flower Kingdom would send out spies who recruited the more promising enemy soldiers into deserting, or joining the Kingdom.  Eventually the invading armies would drift away, dazed.

Then the evil Kukh Brothers attacked.  They uncovered an old tar pit and began dumping oily wastes into the Lotus moat, killing the flowers. However, this took so long that every resident of the Lotus Kingdom was able to flee, along with many cuttings and seeds from the Buddha’s Peace Lotuses.

And for 2000 years, the devotees of the Kingdom scattered throughout the world.  They would  introduce the Buddha Peace Lotuses into water gardens everywhere powerful persons assembled.  They hoped the the Lotus’ mystical beauty would quell any warlike thoughts among the kings and despots that might draw near.

But the Kukh Brothers also continued their quest to destroy every one of the sacred Lotuses.

And here I am,  in possession of the very last Buddha Peace Lotus seeds and sprouts.

I am trying to raise these lotuses from old seeds unknowingly given to me by a friend.

I suspected something was unusual when the seeds germinated and sprouted so rapidly.  It’s staggering that 10-year-old seeds would sprout at all.

I remembered the wonderful folks who’d given me the aged seeds.  They’d laughed about seeing a copperhead near the lotus where they were given the seeds, in an aquatic garden in Washington, DC. 

Of course!   The ancient legends could have mentioned that a poisonous snake sometimes guarded the lotuses. 

And what better staging area, for slipping a Buddha Peace Lotus into the Camp David water garden over the years, than from a DC aquatic garden?   Did the Lotus help President Carter to achieve the 1973 Peace Accords?

Meanwhile, the lotuses continued to sprout in my office, even as I watched.

I’m also noticing the change in water color, from red to milky brown. Was iron consumed? Did red clay settle out?

The more I enlarged the lotus leaf photo, the more the surface looked like a slab of jade. I felt so eerie that I had to include a picture of the jade moon I use in our Lotus rites.

Now it’s your turn.

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What have you noted in your area or travels? Snow on the bird feeders yet?

Please post your observations and general location in your comments. I’ll check back by lunchtime.

/s/ Redwoodman