MooOb
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Underneath each of us ... - 28/07/2008 21:15
And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye
(Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
In the fall of 1988 my wife Georgia and I were invited to give a presentation on self-esteem and peak performance at a conference in Hong Kong. Since we had never been to the Far East before, we decided to extend our trip and visit Thailand.
When we arrived in Bangkok, we decided to take a tour of the citys most famous Buddhist temples. Along with our interpreter and driver, Georgia and I visited numerous Buddhist temples that day, but after a while they all began to blur in our memories.
However, there was one temple that left an indelible impression on our hearts and minds. It is called the Temple of the Golden Buddha. The temple itself is very small, probably no larger than thirty feet by thirty feet. But as we entered, we were stunned by the presence of a ten-and-a-half-foot-tall, solid-gold Buddha. It weighs over two-and-a-half tons and is valued at approximately US$196 million! It was quite an awesome sight the kindly gentle, yet imposing solid-gold Buddha smiling down at us.
As we immersed ourselves in the normal sightseeing tasks (taking pictures while oohing and aahing over the statue), I walked over to a glass case that contained a large piece of clay about eight inches thick and twelve inches wide. Next to the glass case was a typewritten page describing the history of this magnificent piece of art.
Back in 1957 a group of monks from a monastery had to relocate a clay Buddha from their temple to a new location. The monastery was to be relocated to make room for the development of a highway through Bangkok. When the crane began to lift the giant idol, the weight of it was so tremendous that it began to crack. Whats more, rain began to fall. The head monk, who was concerned about the damage to the sacred Buddha, decided to lower the status back to the ground and cover it with a large canvas tarp to protect from the rain.
Later that evening the head monk went to check on the Buddha. He shined his flashlight under the tarp to see if the Buddha was staying dry. As the light reached the crack, the noticed a little gleam shining bank and thought it strange. As he took a closer look at this gleam of light, he wondered if there might be something underneath the clay. He went to fetch a chisel and hammer from the monastery and began to chip away at the clay. As he knocked off shards of clay, the little gleam grew brighter and bigger. Many hours of labour went by before the monk stood face to face with the extraordinary solid-gold Buddha.
Historians believe that several hundred years before the head monks discovery, the Burmese army was about to invade Thailand (then called Siam). The Siamese monks, realizing that their country would soon be attacked, covered their precious golden Buddha with an outer covering of clay in order to keep their treasure from being looted by the Burmese. Unfortunately, it appears that the Burmese slaughtered all the Siamese monks, and the well-kept secret of the golden Buddha remained intact until that fateful day in 1957.
As we flew home on Cathay Pacific Airlines I began to think to myself, We are all like the clay Buddha covered with a shell of hardness created out of fear, and yet underneath each of us is a golden Buddha, a golden Christ or a golden essence, which is our real self. Somewhere along the way, between the ages of two and nine, we begin to cover our golden essence, our natural self. Much like the monk with the hammer and chisel, our task now is to discover our true essence once again.
(The Golden Buddha, Jack Canfield, Chicken Soup for the Soul)
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