Unveiling the Golden Within: A Tale of Self-Discovery

Today, I want to share one of my all-time favourite stories—one that I like to remind often to both myself and my students whenever the topic of self-discovery comes up.

Once upon a time in Thailand..

..there was a monastery that had to be moved to a new place. The monastery had this massive clay Buddha that needed to be relocated with everything else.

The move finally started, and as the monks were handling the big statue, one of them noticed a crack in the clay. They stopped everything and decided to take a closer look at the crack.

The monk grabbed a flashlight and checked out the Buddha, only to discover a shiny light reflected back at him.

Filled with excitement, the monks grabbed hammer and chisel and carefully started chipping away at the clay until they uncovered… a solid gold Buddha!

According to historians, way back in the day, around the Sukhothai period (1230s-1430s), the wise monks living in the monastery covered the Buddha with clay to protect it from an upcoming army attack. They figured the invaders wouldn’t care about a giant clay statue and, in this way, they would protect it from being melted and sold.

All the monks died during that attack, and with them, the knowledge of what was hiding under the clay.

Nevertheless, the Golden Buddha survived to this day, and it sits in Bangkok’s temple of Wat Traimit.

We’re not so different from that Golden Buddha

We all spend our lives hiding our gold with layers of clay.

We build up our layers when we hide our vulnerability behind anger, strategies and limiting beliefs hoping to protect ourselves.

Just like those monks, we have the power to chip away at our false exterior. Tara Brach calls it ‘our ego space suit’.

Uncovering the gold is a lifelong adventure. Every chip away at the clay brings us closer to our true selves and a more authentic way of living.

Thank you for reading until here.

Much love,
Maria