According to Osho, the flowering is an inner event: when a center fully opens, it feels like a bud becoming a flower. Since this cannot be directly displayed, sages used a symbol—the lotus in bloom. To signify the first stirrings of the chakras, they portrayed it as an upside‑down, hanging lotus, an emblem translating subtle awakening into visible form.
We show inner spiritual blooming by picturing a lotus flower—often upside down—to represent the chakras waking up.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Blooming. Yes, blooming. Inside there is an experience: when a center blossoms completely, it feels as if there was a bud that has opened into a flower. How to express this outwardly? So outwardly they adopted the symbol of the lotus in bloom. And as if that lotus were hanging upside down—the first experience of the chakras comes just like a flower hanging upside down.
Yes, blossoming. There is an inner experience: when a center fully blossoms, it feels as if there was a bud and it has opened into a flower. Now, how to express this outwardly? Outwardly they made a symbol of it—the lotus has bloomed. And then, as if this lotus were hanging upside down, the first experience of the chakras comes just like that—as if the flower is hanging upside down.
Chidaaptih pushpam what are the flowers for the worship? -- to be filled with consciousness.
To be a Buddha is not only blissful. It is blissful as far as Buddha himself is concerned. He comes to a peak experience of bliss. But at the same time he has to pay very dearly, because he becomes so sensitive that everything around him gives him pain. He suffers because of others' suffering. A beggar meets you: you pass him unconsciously; there is no problem, it is very convenient. If you become conscious, then it is not so convenient. Then you are bound to come to realize that you have a hand in it, you are part of this ugly world. You are responsible for all that is, whether it is a Vietnam war or a Hindu-Mohammedan riot or poverty. Whatsoever is there, if you become conscious you become responsible. It is difficult now to escape. This is the cost to be paid. So never think that Buddha…
‘Lotus’ is a beloved symbol for mystics—for many reasons. First, it is born in mud, in dirty mud. It arises from mud where no one would have suspected the possibility. Had we not known, seeing the mud no one could have imagined, dreamed, conceived that a lotus would be born from this! Mud and lotus—there seems no connection. Where the lotus, where the mud! The lotus appears so opposite to this earth—as though it has come from beyond, not of this earth. As though a stranger, descended from the sky. So untouched, so virginal, so beautiful, so delicate—how could it be born of mud! Such virginity belongs to the sky! Thus, in the lotus there is something of the sky, and something that has come from mud. Therefore it is a most significant symbol. Man too is mud—a form of clay! Yet the lotus can bloom.
Osho, that morning the Buddha bestowed the supreme treasure of silence upon Mahakashyapa by offering him the symbolic flower. A flower blooms in the morning and withers by evening. Yet the Zen tradition is alive to this day. Kindly explain the relation between the flower’s transience and the living vitality of Zen.
Seeing the meeting of these two lotuses, Mahakashyapa laughed—he blossomed. It was a unique event. Therefore the Buddha offered that lotus to Mahakashyapa and said to his monks, “What I could say in words, I have given you. What cannot be said in words and has not been said, I am giving to Mahakashyapa—wordlessly.” Thus, in the Zen tradition, from then on, one master has been giving to another in silence. One more story. In Mahakashyapa’s lineage there was Bodhidharma. Bodhidharma went to China, and from India the Zen tradition reached China. Bodhidharma was the twenty-eighth Indian patriarch. In China, Bodhidharma sat facing a wall for nine years. People came, but he would not look at them. He kept his back toward them. People asked, “We have seen many monks, many saints—but why do you keep your back to us?” Bodhidharma said, “When one worthy of falling within my eyes…
Anand means bliss, suman means a flower -- a blissful flower. And remember that man is also a tree and has roots. They are invisible but they are there. We are as much rooted as any tree. Certainly our earth is different -- our earth is our past, the whole past of humanity is our earth; it is there we are rooted. But if a tree remains just the roots it is meaningless. The tree cannot be without roots, that is true. The tree will die without the roots, that's true. But if a tree is just the roots then it is meaningless, then there is no purpose. The tree has to flower, the tree has to become fruitful -- then there is meaning, then there is joy. Our earth is our past, our future is our sky.