The Golden Buddha

today i was able to attend women's conference at BYUH. i really felt like with all the hustle and bustle going on in our lives right now that i needed to go and sit and listen. i could only attend today and wish that i would have been able to go yesterday too because i was spiritually fed. today was just 3 classes. the first was my favorite. managing feelings of inadequacy by natalie norton. a mother to 3 earthly boys and one heavenly baby, gavin. her presentation was amazing. she told of her experience with losing her little 8 week old baby which had us all sobbing but related it so well to gratitude, our attitudes, our worth and our joy here on this earth.

her topic was really about our worth. our worth is inherent, we are worthy because we are God's children. she told a beautiful story that i will never forget about a Golden Buddha .

(this is for you Holly)

Back in 1957 a group of monks from a monastery had to relocate a clay Buddha from their temple to a new location. The monastery was to be relocated to make room for the development of a highway through Bangkok. When the crane began to lift the giant idol, the weight of it was so tremendous that it began to crack. What's more, rain began to fall. The head monk, who was concerned about damage to the sacred Buddha, decided to lower the statue back to the ground and cover it with a large canvas tarp to protect it from the rain.

Later that evening the head monk went to check on the Buddha. He shined his flashlight under the tarp to see if the Buddha was staying dry. As the light reached the crack, he noticed a little gleam shining back and thought it strange. As he took a closer look at this gleam of light, he wondered if there might be something underneath the clay. He went to fetch a chisel and hammer from the monastery and began to chip away at the clay. As he knocked off shards of clay, the little gleam grew brighter and bigger. Many hours of labor went by before the monk stood face to face with the extraordinary solid-gold Buddha.

Historians believe that several hundred years before the head monk's discovery, the Burmese army was about to invade Thailand (then called Siam). The Siamese monks realizing that their country would soon be attacked, covered their precious golden Buddha with an outer covering of clay in order to keep their treasure from being looted by the Burmese. Unfortunately, it appears that the Burmese slaughtered all the Siamese monks, and the well-kept secret of the golden Buddha remained intact until that fateful day in 1957.

inside all of us is a golden buddha. we just muck it all up with self doubt, self destruction, failing faith, and worry about what others think, comparing ourselves to others and striving to gain accolades from the world. all we need to do is live to please our Heavenly Father and to let our inner gold shine.

she of course was much more eloquoent in her delivery but the feeling i had in the class will stay with me.