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 city's 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 in 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 one hundred and ninety-six million dollars! 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 ahhing 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.
What's more, rain began to fall. The head monk, who was concerned about damage
to the sacred Buddha, decided to lower the statue back to the ground and cover
it with a large canvas tarp to protect it 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, he noticed a little gleam shining back 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 monk's 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 up our 'golden essence,' our natural
self. Much like the monk with the hammer and the chisel, our task now is to
discover our true essence once again.
By Jack Canfield from Condensed Chicken Soup for the Soul Copyright 1996 by Jack
Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen & Patty Hansen,p. 69-71.
Http://www.chickensoup.com
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