Graduation Speech: "Wishing to Be a Lotus" Author: Louie Zeng ，Grade 5 Student  6-19-2026  

Respected principal, teachers, parents, and dear classmates,

Good day, everyone! My name is Luyao, and I am a fifth-grade student. I feel very honored to be the student giving the Chinese speech at our elementary school graduation ceremony today.

During my years at Little Lotus School, my classmates and I have not only been bathed in the Buddha-light of Dafa, but also nourished in body and mind by divinely inspired culture, like a gentle, silent rain. I have learned many principles about how to be a good person, how to cultivate myself, and how to develop virtue. I am grateful to the school for providing us with such a wonderful environment for learning and cultivation. I am also grateful to our teachers for their years of dedicated teaching and thoughtful care. Today, I would like to share with you my essay, “I Wish to Be a Lotus Flower.”

“I Wish to Be a Lotus Flower”

After reading “On the Love of the Lotus,” I came to understand how pure the lotus flower is, and how it remains untainted by its environment. As the essay says, “It emerges from the mud unstained, and rises from the clear ripples without appearing showy.” The lotus does not compete with other flowers for beauty, nor does it cling to others like a vine. Instead, it protects its own pure side.

The reason the lotus can become a Buddha’s seat or a sacred vessel is because of its incomparable purity and its spirit of emerging from the mud without being stained. It is just like a cultivator practicing in the secular world: not escaping from conflicts, but growing right in the mud, while still remaining clean and upright. Its fragrance can spread far and wide, just as the good news of Dafa can spread to every corner of the world.

The lotus is a miraculous flower. It is known as the gentleman among flowers. The lotus is a flower of the Buddha’s heavenly world, not an ordinary flower of the human world. The reason Zhou Dunyi loved the lotus was because the lotus was very similar to his noble character.

I hope I can be like the lotus flower and not be polluted. Although I cannot always do it perfectly, I want to try my very best to be like the lotus.

That was my essay. This is the lotus flower in my heart, and it is also what I hope for myself.

I still remember that before we wrote this essay, our teacher said to us, “This essay is not something you are handing in to your teacher. It is something you are giving to your future self. If one day you feel that you are about to be influenced by a bad environment, I hope you will still remember that you once wished to be a pure lotus flower.”

Graduating from elementary school is not the end, but a new beginning. In the future, no matter when or where I am, I hope I will always remember the principles I learned at Little Lotus School and strive to be a kind, upright, and pure person.

Finally, I would once again like to thank the school, thank my teachers, thank my mother, and thank my classmates who have grown together with me.

Thank you, everyone!

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Little Lotus Academy website: https://www.littlelotusacademy.org/