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Writer's pictureIan Catterall

The Golden Buddha

A story goes that a village had a statue of Buddha made of solid gold.


When they were attacked they had no time to hide it and so, in order to save it from being taken, they covered it in clay and left it behind. The statue was forgotten and decades if not hundreds of years later the clay was removed and the statue was found underneath perfectly preserved.


This may be a true story - I don't know but its a helpful analogy.


Often in working on ourselves we think we need to change the core of what or who we are and this can feel impossible. However, according to Buddhism we don't need to change at all - we all have our own perfect "Buddha nature" right there in us. What happens is that as we experience the world it this inherent perfect self becomes harder to find and we no longer see the simple beauty in ourselves, in the world around us and in others. We perhaps become cynical and hardened to things.


Buddhism would say you don't really need to change - you need to simply allow these layers of conditioning to fall away and you will find this better self waiting there for you. That's potentially much easier than believing you need to battle hard and change the core of your nature.


It's not about changing who you intrinsically are, then but about just seeing that under all this you are pefect. despite the mistakes you might make or the anger you might carry. Each time you notice this and accept who you are, you commit an act of self love and a little more of the clay hiding the gold falls away and you come closer to reaching back to your true nature.


If you look even now you will see little glimpses of it telling you its there.

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