I offer two stories which which I have found inspirational. Both are worth meditating and reflecting on.
The Golden Buddha
During renovations at a monastery in Thailand in 1955, a minor statue about 10 feet in height was being moved. It was covered with a thick layer of stucco and was painted and inlaid with pieces of colored glass. During the moving, cracks in the stucco appeared. The moving was halted to investigate. To the surprise of everyone it was discovered that the stucco was covering what was in fact a solid gold statue.
While no one knows for sure what had originally happened, historians believe that the villagers at some time in the past had covered the statue with stucco and decorated it so that invaders would overlook it. Apparently the whole village had been killed because no one remembered that it was actually a beautiful gold statue.
So many teachers in so many different traditions have spoken about the goodness that lies in all of us, but it can so easily get covered and forgotten.
An Unforgettable Classroom Exercise
One day a high school teacher asked her students to think of the nicest thing they could say about each of their classmates and write it down. Then the teacher wrote the name of each student on a separate sheet of paper and listed what everyone else had said about that student. She then gave each student his or her list. The students enjoyed getting the sheet and talked about it in class and that was that.
Several years later, one of the students was killed in Vietnam and his teacher attended the funeral. After the funeral, the man’s mother and father came up to the teacher and told her that they had found the sheet in their son’s wallet. They thanked her for what she had done because he clearly treasured that sheet of paper. Some of his classmates, also at the funeral, overheard the conversation. Several of them came up and said that they still had their paper—in the top drawer of a desk at home, in an album, in their wallet...
So often we never know the consequences of small acts of kindness and generosity.
I could write at length about what each story means to me, but that would probably lessen your own reflection on the stories. In a few days, I will write what the stories have said to me, and I ask that you consider sharing also. Each reflection is a gift to others.