Gary Larson Depicted IT So Well...

Gary Larson Depicted IT So Well...

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Tuesday, October 28, 2008

. . . shell of hardness created out of fear . . .

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 from 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 shinned his flashlight under the tarp to see if the Buddha was staying dry. As the light reached the crack, he noticed a little gleam shinning 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 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.

"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." Jack Canfield
The golden Buddha is ten-and-a-half-foot tall, solid-gold, weighs over two-and-a-half tons and it was valued in 1992 at approximately one hundred and ninety-six million dollars. Our true essences are more impressive and much more valuable.

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