“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.”