Thailand is home to the largest, solid gold Buddha in the world. It’s about 13 feet tall and would be worth around 300 million today, depending on the price of gold.
It was created sometime between 1200 and 1400 common era.
Did you know a lot of Buddha statues in the world are missing heads because it was the easiest thing for thieves to remove and melt down to sell?
This Buddha kept his head.
But he did so because his true identity was kept secret until 1954, hundreds of years after being disguised to protect him from becoming a spoil of war and after many moves from one insignificant temple to another.
Because who wanted a cheap concrete Buddha embedded with fake, kitschy glass in their temple?
No one could see this Buddha for what he actually was after so many years of neglect and wear and tear and intentional hiding, concealing, masking.
A lot like each one of us.
Except the concrete and cheap gems are layered on by difficult life experiences and then by the crap stories our asshole brain tells us about those experiences and about ourselves. Most of the concrete, we mixed and applied ourselves.
I’ve always told my students this, from the very beginning:
“You are covered in a layer of ick, hardened crap, solidified fear and anger icing of mostly your own making. Dance is the pick axe that will bust through those layers. But it will take effort and commitment, compassion and devotion to the true self that lies waiting underneath. It’s simple but it’s never easy.”
Only days ago did I hear this story of the Golden Buddha, and yes, I thought… no matter what has happened to us, this core, this center, this original self is always there, waiting in radiance to be uncovered.
This is our work in this life: to allow this aspect of ourselves to shine through.
Once we reveal this self and devote ourselves to its maintenance, crap will still cling. Dance goes from pick axe to teflon coating at this point.
You keep doing the work so that the crap finally, after it hits you, just…slides…off…