Why Monks Wear Orange Robes
Christina Sarich, Guest
Waking Times
Every spiritual culture has their symbolism. While there is wisdom to be had from each spiritual practice, Theravada Buddhist monks’ symbolically orange or saffron robes have captured the curiosity of the world.
Why not wear white, like the Kundalini yogis wear due to its purity, or blue, the color of the infinitely expanding sky?
In Thailand, Bhutan, China, India, and elsewhere, you can see the saffron robes walking down the street, almost before you see the monks themselves.
This color is chosen because it radiates like the first flames of the sun, or a light that shines in the depth of darkness. This color sets ignorance and fear ablaze, illuminating our consciousness in the process. The orange color of a meditating monks robes is indicative of a certain mindset.
It echoes the same ideology of the Vedas, and the prevalence of the lotus flower throughout most of Eastern religions. The lowly seed that grows from the murky depths in muddy, shallow waters, into a beautiful flower with petals that float above the murk and filth from which it grew.
These are all references to the transformation of our consciousness. The metaphor for moving through our darkness and into our own light.
Light clears away darkness (like the light inferred in the orange of the sunrise in a Monk’s robes or the filth of living below our destined illuminated state, instead of blossoming into a beautiful flower).
However, the robes and flowers are not just a metaphor.
As even MIT scientists struggle over the brain’s ability to make light in the form of biophotons, we can observe that we’re all coming to terms with our own luminosity.
Our neurons emit and even beckon the light – literally.
And then, it’s not just in our brains. Even our mitochondria, the machines inside cells which produce our energy, contain several prominent photosensitive chromophores (an atom or group of atoms responsible for the color of a compound.)
if we pair these poetic symbols with our limited understanding of DNA, and its ability to hold, receive, and communicate light then we can also see that there is great truth in our spiritual heritage, if we only look past the surface.
That 99% of our genome called “dark” DNA or “junk” DNA is just the parts of ourselves we don’t understand. These too are filled with light, literally, and metaphorically, so that we may rise into a completely different experience of the world and the Cosmos.
Scientists thought that once they ordered the 3 million pairs of letters – those base pairs which make up our DNA, that they would hold the key to wisdom, but this is elementary knowledge.
The secret is in the light.
Light is always coherent. It always contains the Infinite Wisdom of the larger Consciousness of which we are all a part. The monks robes are a reminder. The lotus bursting from murky water is a reminder.
To move past the defilement of the world – the darkness, or the dross – we bring our minds to the light. We train ourselves to live purely, to think kindly, and to love deeply.
This then encodes our DNA, and we evolve, quite miraculously into beings of light – our origin, our destination, and our substance
Read more articles by Christina Sarich.
About the Author
Christina Sarich is a staff writer for Waking Times. She is a writer, musician, yogi, and humanitarian with an expansive repertoire. Her thousands of articles can be found all over the Internet, and her insights also appear in magazines as diverse as Weston A. Price, Nexus, Atlantis Rising, and the Cuyamungue Institute, among others. She was recently a featured author in the Journal, “Wise Traditions in Food, Farming, and Healing Arts,” and her commentary on healing, ascension, and human potential inform a large body of the alternative news lexicon. She has been invited to appear on numerous radio shows, including Health Conspiracy Radio, Dr. Gregory Smith’s Show, and dozens more. The second edition of her book, Pharma Sutra, will be released soon.
This article (Why Monks Wear Orange Robes) was originally published by Healers of the Light, and is re-posted here with the author’s permission.