The Golden Buddha
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 have never been to 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’s 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 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-half-foot tall, solid-gold Buddha. It weighs over five-and-half tons and is valued at approximately two hundred and fifty million dollars! It was awesome sight – the kindly gentle, yet imposing solid-gold Buddha smiling down at us.
As we immersed ourselves in the normal sight-seeing tasks (taking pictures while oohing and ahhing over the statue), I walked over to a glass case that contained large piece of clay about eight inches thick and twelve inches wide. Next to the glass case was a type written page describing the history of this magnificent piece of art.
Back in 1954 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 is more, rain began to fall. The head monk, who was concerned about the 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 in the 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 labor 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 the 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 1954.
As we flew home on Cathay Pacific Airlines I began to think to myself, “We are all like clay Buddha covered with a shell of hardness created out of fear, and 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.”
Credits: This story is attributed to Jack Canfield, co-creator of the Chicken Soup series. We have changed some of the dates to match with what we found on Wikepedia. We have also corrected the estimated weight of the statue to reflect its more accurate value. The value of the statue has been changed to reflect current gold prices.
You may also like: Key To Happiness
Facinating story!!