Korean Temples and the Lotus Symbol

Buddha’s Birthday is approaching and lanterns are decorating Korean temples and the streets of Seoul.

The Lotus Lantern Festival, yeondunghoe, starts off the festivities running for a week up to Buddha’s Birthday. Lanterns are said to illuminate the world of ignorance with Buddha’s wisdom and guide sentient beings.

Jogyesa is the main temple for the Jogye Buddhist sect in Korea. It’s in Jongno, central Seoul.

And in the mornings as the office workers are filing into the nearby large modern office buildings, a handful of visitors are milling around the temple for the morning ceremony.

Listening to the chanting and the beat of the moktak, wooden percussion instrument, it’s like an oasis of calm in the centre of the city.

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Every year for Buddha’s Birthday, there’s a ceiling of pink and red lanterns in the grounds of Korean temples. Anyone can buy a lantern, write their name and a wish on it, and then hang it in the temple.

From the layout of the temple to the intricate paintings, carvings and statues, there is symbolism everywhere. I want to know more it, but it’s a lot to take in at first.

So to simplify matters, I decided to break things down. And concentrate on just one symbol – THE LOTUS.

What is the meaning behind the lotus?

So Buddhism is about getting liberated from samsara (the cycle of birth and death) and becoming reborn in the Buddhist paradise.

And the lotus represents the devotion of Buddhists who aspire to awaken to their true nature.

The reason for this is that the lotus grows in muddy water but blooms cleanly above the water without getting tainted by the mud. So it symbolises purity of heart and mind.

While the mud symbolises ignorance, the blooming lotus is a symbol of the enlightened mind.

Buddhists believe that the human mind is originally pure and everyone can rise from the mud of ignorance and reach enlightenment to become perfected beings.

Buddha statues and images may be depicted seated on a lotus – in the Buddhist paradise all Buddhists are believed to be reborn on a lotus. So the lotus also symbolises a womb from where we can be reborn.

Where can you find the lotus image in Korean temples?

When I started looking more closely, I found lotus images everywhere from buds to open flowers. So a lotus in full bloom represents the enlightened Buddha, while lotus buds represent sentient beings who may bloom and become Buddhas in the future.

Joining palms in front of the chest is a hand gesture symbolizing a young lotus bud that may bloom later.

Lotus flowers are also engraved into the centre of temple bells.

Here the log swings and should strike the centre of the bell on the lotus to make the bell ring strong and clear. Lotus designs also decorate other instruments such as wind chimes and golden drums and they represent the sound of Dharma.

Lotus images appear on murals, textiles, ceramics, metalwork, bronzes, lacquerware, and wood carvings. They are found on pagodas, stupas, and tiles.

And of course there’s lotus symbolism in painting too. This painting (above) depicts one of the eight paintings of Buddha’s life – a lotus appears with every step the baby Buddha takes.

There are colourful lotuses painted on ceilings or carved into the top of wooden pillars or carved on stone steps to suggest rising from a lotus patch. And real lotus flowers can be found in temple ponds! Once I started noticing this, the lotus symbolism was endless!

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