Story Of The Golden Buddha

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After our discussion in class, I took some time to think about what artifact has impacted my life. It took me quite some time to think of something tangible, but finally I was reminded of a story that I had heard in my Interpersonal Communication class last semester. It is ‘The Story of the Golden Buddha’. As we speak about artifacts and the way they shape our world, we seem to focus on smaller aspects of life. For example, Bell Hooks looked at individual works and how their language, or images have potentially impacted women or minorities in our society. For me, ‘The Story of the Golden Buddha’ did not just change my perspective in one aspect of my life, but instead has changed many. There are several version of ‘The Story of the Golden …show more content…

However, what impacted me was actually the author’s interpretation of this story. He explains, “we are all like the clay Buddha, covered with a shell of hardness created out of fear, and yet underneath each of us is a ‘golden Buddha’…which is our real self” (Canfield, 2013). As we were listening to this story in class last spring, this message struck a chord within me, and I left the class feeling different. Had I really let those around me contribute to coving up my ‘natural self’ as Canfield calls it? Without knowing it, was I walking around with years of “clay” and not giving the world all I had to offer? These questions bothered me for several days and finally I decided that if I felt the need to question it, this was probably happening. From then on, it changed my perspective on how I represent myself in the world. I used the golden Buddha as a symbol of the kind of person I wanted to be for myself. I made a promise that if I felt the need to act a certain way based off of others, I would instead act the way I actually felt. That I would be honest and embrace my natural self, instead of hiding it. If this changed the way others felt about me, then so be it, because I deserved to feel golden all the time. Since then, I have seen myself in a more confident light. I have learned how to trust my instincts and to always do what is right for me, even if it is not what I am being told is

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