In Buddhism lotus symbolizes the state of being unstained and pure, which results from two channels - "no touching no stains" and "touched but with no stains". With the changes of Buddhism and the advent of the Chan after the Mid-Tnag Dynasty, the way for lotus to remain unstained changed from Sequestering ("no touching no stains") to Approaching ("sut with no stains"). Then in the Song Dynasty the Ethicists interpreted the Chan by referring to Confucianism. They considered unstainedness of lotus from the ontological perspective and denoted that it symbolized the personality of the official intellectuals by ascending to the connotation of lotus Moreover, lotus growing out of sludge typically refers to the moral and talented prostitutes in Chinese literature, and this development finds its connotation in Buddhism by descending itself.
