The Golden Buddha In Each of Us

“Do you know the story of the Golden Buddha?” he asked.

I shook my head slightly. I was panting too hard to verbalize the word “No,” but he wouldn’t have heard me anyway.

“Many, many years ago, in a small village in Asia, there was a large statue of the Buddha, made completely out of gold. There was very little else in the village; it was a poor group of people, farmers mostly. But they had this statue.”

I grabbed the towel and dried my forehead quickly. I grimaced as the sweat began dripping down my neck between my shoulder blades. I wiped my neck but couldn’t reach any lower. Dull aches declared their presence in my calves but I kept moving.

“Word traveled to the village that an army was making its way through the countryside and that they would likely arrive at the village within the next few days. The villagers knew that they did not have much of value but they did not want to lose their statue of the Golden Buddha.

I looked him in the eye. I still couldn’t speak and my legs were still pumping but he had piqued my interest.

“The villagers decided to cover their statue with mud,” he continued. “They were careful not to leave any spots bare that would give away the gold statue underneath. The mud dried in the afternoon sun and, when the army arrived, they thought the statue was simply made of stone.”

I thought I could tell where he was going by that point but I kept listening. I didn’t have much choice, of course; he had a captive audience and I was part of it.

“The army decided they liked that small village and ended up settling there. No one in the village ever gave away the secret of the statue and, as time went on, the original villagers died and took their secret with them.”

I leaned down to pick up the bottle and squeezed the water into my mouth. I gulped it down, feeling the moisture return briefly to my throat. My calves began feeling a bit better, either because I had pushed through or because they had gone numb.

“Years and years later, when the army had left and the village had become peaceful again, a small group of children were playing near the statue of the Buddha. They ended up hitting the bottom of the statue with a stick and some of the mud that had remained there for years broke off, revealing the golden statue underneath. The children ran to get their parents and the villagers broke off the rest of the mud until the stone statue was Golden once again.”

Keep breathing, I thought to myself. I winced as my calves began barking again. You’ve made it this far, you can at least keep going long enough to see how he connects the metaphor.

“We are all the Golden Buddha,” he concluded. “When we’re born, we’re shiny and new and we gleam in the sun. And, as we go through childhood and adolescence, we pack mud onto ourselves, covering our true identities as we try to fit in with our friends, our neighbors, our society. It gets to the point where it can be hard to even remember how much we have to offer, how unique we are. It’s not until we’re older that we’re able to start taking the steps to crack off some of that mud we’ve accumulated to finally rediscover the fact that, underneath everything, we’re all made of gold.”

I finally stopped pedaling as he finished the story. I stretched out my legs, wiped away the sweat from my forehead again and cleaned off the spinning bike. The metaphor had not been lost on me as he had been speaking; I could see how it could be applied to the spinning class participants, my social work clients and myself. I finished cleaning the bike, readjusted the seat and handlebars, took a deep breath and smiled.

When I did a tiny bit of research, I realized that either the spinning instructor had gotten a few details wrong as he told the story or I just didn’t remember how he had told it. Apparently, in the mid-1950s, a group of Thai monks were relocating their entire monastery, including a large clay statue of the Buddha. One of the monks noticed a crack in the clay and chipped away at it to find the gold. The story has been used as a metaphor for finding one’s purpose, as well as numerous other perspectives on personal healing and parenting.