The gold within

I was having a conversation a while back with a friend about whether humans were inherently good or evil. I stood on the good side and she stood on the side of evil. I haven’t thought much of that conversation since it happened over a month ago but for some reason I woke up with it lingering in my mind. I don’t believe there is a right or wrong answer here but another story has been on my mind a lot that pleads my case well.

I could guess that more people will fall on the side of “all people are inherently evil” these days because the world is a very broken place. And I can’t lie, I often find myself shaking my head and sighing when I hear about things people say and do. There seem to be many more reasons to think humans natural tendency leans towards evil than good these days. But as painful as it is to see the things humans can do, I still stand firmly on the side of our true self being good.

The story that has been taking up more space than necessary in my mind lately is the story of the golden Buddha. Honestly, this story has been spinning in my mind since around March of this year. I will share my version with you below. To be honest, I’m still not sure if this is a true story or just a parable to explain the human condition. Either way, it is such a beautiful way to think of ourselves and everyone around us.

Less than 100 years ago in Thailand a group of monks were preparing to move a stone Buddha statue to a new location. During the process, a monk noticed a large crack in the exterior. This monk further inspected the crack by shining a flashlight into the crack and discovered the core of the statue was made of what appeared to be gold. The group of monks were quite perplexed. Why would a beautiful golden statue be covered by ordinary stone? They began to chip away the exterior stone and discovered the most beautifully ornate golden Buddha statue underneath.

What the monks discovered was that hundreds of years ago, when a foreign army was invading the village, the monks covered the golden statue with plaster, stone and mud to prevent it from being stolen. Unfortunately all the monks were killed by the invading army. However, the statue was not stolen because it was not considered valuable. In a sense, the monks achieved what they were hoping to do, protect the golden Buddha statue.

For hundreds of years, each generation of monks continued to care for this stone Buddha blind to the fact that it was truly gold. Each time there was damage or a crack, the monks would repair it with more plaster, mud and stone.

Over the years, layer after layer of material was caked over the gold, initially to protect the gold within but eventually it was because they didn’t know the gold existed. Then one large crack and a curious monk changed it for everyone.

This story of the golden Buddha is so beautiful to me. The monks were doing what they could to protect their precious statue but unknowingly hid it from the world for hundreds of years.

I believe we are all born with this golden core of pure love, goodness and divinity. Each of us have had something happen in our lives that made us feel threatened so we did what we needed to do to hide our gold. A moment of self preservation or attempted protection from another led to our first layer of stone. As the years go on, we continually add layer upon layer of mud, stone and plaster over our own golden core.

At some point, we forget our true nature. The gold that is inherent within each of us. Although the stone does serve as a protective layer for a time, it is not meant to become who we are. This golden center, that we contain, is the pure and divine goodness in each of us. It is how we were truly designed to walk through the world. But so many of us have forgotten this truth. All we see is our stone exterior and we cannot identify with anything else.

Again, we are designed to be gold. If we cannot chip away at our own layers of protection and discover the gold, how can we expect anyone else to see our true nature? And if we cannot see our own goodness, how could we possibly see goodness hidden in anyone else? All we are doing is walking around covered in stone, fully believing it is our true nature. All we show is our stone and all we see in others is stone. There is a nearly constant clashing of these layers that creates friction which leads to fear, anger and hatred.

The problem is not simple. It is not an easy task to simply chip away at our own stone and the stone of others. First we must acknowledge the gift the stone provided. That once, a long time ago, that stone layer protected our true nature from being stolen. It was a gift for a time but is and never was who we actually are. Chipping away at these stone layers that have been our only idea of our self for so long is a painful, exhausting and honestly a quite terrifying process.

Once we begin to excavate our own layers, it only takes one glimpse at the gold interior to give us the courage to continue. When we see how luminous we are designed to be, it is hard to resist the natural inclination to continue to uncover this part of our being. Feeling the golden core of ourselves, filled with divine love and goodness, is intoxicating in the best of ways. Yet, it still is not a simple or easy journey to undertake.

The hardest part though often comes when we begin to see our own inherent goodness and our first inclination is to start to break the stone in everyone around us rather than continue to the work on ourselves. We cannot do this work for anyone around us. It is always an inside job. The best thing we can do is continue to see the gold in ourselves and shine it outward to guide others to do the same.

When we cannot see the gold in ourselves then we lose sight of the gold in others. We then start to judge, shame and blame ourselves and all those around us. These behaviors never lead to positive change, only heartbreaking prejudice, fear and hatred.

So the problem often lies within rather than without. When we can walk ourselves towards our own true nature of goodness and love, when we can finally see our own golden Buddha statue within, we begin to shift our perspective of the world. It becomes easier to distinguish gold vs stone in others as soon as we are capable of witnessing the difference within ourselves.

The world is struggling and I often feel as if there is nothing I can do to make it a better and more kind place. Then I remember the golden Buddha. All I must do is continue to work on excavating my own golden statue within. When I work on finding the goodness and love within myself, I can become so much better at observing that same gold in everyone around me. Even when so many are choosing to fight the world with stone, I will choose to fight with the light and love that comes from gold.

If we could only see that stone clashing with stone will never feel quite right. But gold shining on gold will always feel like a sweet gift to the world.

The world could absolutely use a bit more gold and a lot less stone these days. So the work is simple, when the cracks appear, and they always will, shine a light within to see what you can discover before rushing to slap on another layer of stone.