The Story of the Golden Buddha – Finding Joe
Alan Cohen tells the story of the Golden Buddha in this scene from the movie Finding Joe. Movie Trailer
The Story of the Golden Buddha.
Many years ago in Thailand there is a temple that was called the temple of the Golden Buddha. And there was a huge statue of Golden Buddha.
Word came to this village where the monastery was that an army from a neighbouring country was about to invade.
They got the brilliant scheme to cover the Golden Buddha, which is quite large, with mud and concrete so that it looked basically like a stone Buddha and then the army would perceive no value in it.
Sure enough this army rolled in with it’s caissons and weapons. As they passed by the monastery they saw nothing but a big stone Buddha and they had no reason to plunder it.
Years went by and because the army continued to occupy there was a time when no one remembered that the Buddha was golden.
Until one day a young monk was sitting on the Buddha meditating on his knee and as he got up a little piece of concrete happened to crack off and he saw something shiny and realised it was gold under there.
So he ran to his fellow monks and said, “The Buddha’s golden! The Buddha’s golden!”
They all came out and they realised he was telling the truth and took their picks and hammers and eventually unearthed the Golden Buddha.
Journal Notes:
* Finding Joe movie is based on writer, philosopher and professor Joseph Campbell. Know more about his work here.
* My personal journey to Bodhgaya, where I met Dwarko ji and made a film on his journey.
“Follow your bliss. If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.” – Joseph Campbell