Chinese moon cakes filled with lotus-seed paste deliciously point us to an old story from Homer’s Odyssey. The hero, Odysseus, and his crew took their ship to land after several days of rough voyaging at sea. Odysseus sent a few men from the ship to meet the natives. The kind inhabitants treated their visitors well and gave them some lotus to eat. The crewmen found the lotus so delicious that they lost all desire to go back to the ship. They stopped caring about returning home. In their dreamy, blissful state, they forgot about everything else except remaining in that same place and eating lotus perpetually.
Odysseus sent a team to retrieve their shipmates from among the Lotus-eaters. Carried back to the ship and tied down, the wayward crewmen bitterly cried at their separation from the lotus. Odysseus ordered the rest of his men back on board quickly. They hurriedly pushed off into the sea to get away from the land of the dangerous, but pleasantly nice, Lotus-eaters.
The lotus in the Chinese mooncake and the lotus in the Greek epic may have nothing in common except a name, but the lotus (whatever kind) serves to remind us of another part of our experience of death – forgetfulness. We have forgotten God in our hearts.
When our ancestors lost the knowledge of God in their hearts, they kept only rational knowledge about God. Over time, this knowledge too slipped away. Within societies and cultures spread throughout the world, human beings developed philosophies, mythologies, religious rituals, and spiritual ideologies. In the place of Truth, they answered their questions about human existence, the seen universe, and the unseen the spiritual realm based on human reason, imagination, and their interaction with their environments. Men and women substituted the Creator’s revelation with their own opinions and mistook the deception of demons for spiritual enlightenment. Our forgetfulness of God has produced spiritual confusion in human history, but also in our own souls and the souls of those around us.
Since God made the human being according to His own Image, how can we know what it means to be true human beings if we have forgotten the true God? How can we become like God if we don’t know who the One is we are supposed to be like? If we do not remember the true God, we also forget what it means to be human beings. We also forget how to relate to other human beings properly. This forgetfulness creates chaos in relationships, which are intended to nurture love and peace.
In Chinese mythology, Meng Po, the Lady of Forgetfulness, collects a variety of herbs on earth to make her Five-Flavored Tea of Forgetfulness. This Goddess of Amnesia provides her tea to those souls passing through Diyu, the realm of the dead, so that will not remember their previous lives when reincarnated, according to traditional belief. While amnesia forgetting the past, is an important concept in this myth, the practice of anamnesis, remembering or recollecting the past, proves central to a healthful spiritual life.
A relatively similar Greek myth tells of a river called Lethe. This is the River of Oblivion, that is, the River of Forgetfulness. A river associated with sleep and death, those who drink from its waters forget their lives on earth. The Greek word for forgetfulness (lethe) is the opposite of the word for Truth (aleithia), which means no forgetfulness.
When we forget God, we forget the Truth. We forget the truth about our identity, our purpose, and our potential. If we do not remember, we fall into delusion and error.
Text copyright © 2017 by Fr. Symeon D. S. Kees