Friday, December 22, 2006

Your Inner Buddha

Back in 1957 in Bangkok, a group of monks had to relocate a huge clay Buddha from their temple to a new location. When the crane attempted to lift the giant idol, the weight of it was so tremenduous that it began to crack. The monks fearing the idol would fall and break, lowered it back to the ground.

One of the monks noticed a golden gleam coming from one of the cracks in the clay. After fetching a chisel and hammer and knocking away part of the clay, the monk discovered the clay Buddha was really solid gold!

It is believed that several hundred years earlier, the Burmese army was about to invade Thailand and the monks, (fearing their precious golden Buddha would be looted), covered it with clay in order to hide it. Unfortunately, all of the monks were killed, along with their secret of the golden Buddha until that day in 1957, where it is now found in a Buddhist temple in Bangkok.

The solid golden Buddha is ten and a half feet tall, weighs two and a half tons, and is worth over 196 million dollars!

When we think about it, we are all like the clay Buddha, covering ourselves with a shell of hardness to protect the Golden Self from looting and pillaging. Yet underneath everyone's clay shell, is a golden Buddha.

No matter what we have already been through in our lives, or may continue to go through, our practice is a process of wearing away the clay, to discover, and share, our Golden Self!

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