Have I told you I simply love Metaphors?
In Blogadishu Metaphors make it so easy to paint simple pictures in the mind of the listener. But often they can imprint a very strong message consciously and subconsciously…That is why I use them often in my practice as a psychotherapist..It is like handing my clients a gift that is wrapped as a story that, on the surface, doesn’t concern their lives..almost like pastime..but it isn’t. Underneath the wrapping there is a lesson about life itself, a lesson they would most of the time have not accepted when given to them straight, because their resistance would have stopped them from being able to truly hear what was being said.
One of my favorites is about the golden Buddha.
A long long time ago there was this monastery that had this giant Buddha sitting in front of their temple, a Buddha made of solid gold.
One day the priests got word that their beautiful country was going to be invaded by foreign soldiers. They were afraid that the Chinese soldier would see their shining golden Buddha and that they would take the statue away, melt it and sell it for profit and personal gain. So they came up with a plan.
As quickly as possible they covered the whole Buddha with clay. The sun hardened their work, and just in time there stood a Buddha before their temple that was anything but beautiful: Their quick work had been sloppy, but the gold had been hidden, and that had been the main point of their work.
Then the foreign soldiers came, killing anyone they laid their eyes on. Everybody that knew of the golden Buddha died. The soldiers never knew its secret: They thought the Buddha ugly, searched the place for valuables and left empty handed.
Years passed, peace returned and new priests started using the monastery. They thought it a beautiful place for worship. The only thing wrong with it was the hideous Buddha that stood outside its gates. In order to please themselves and the people visiting them, they painted the Buddha with a thin veneer of gold, hoping everybody would forget it was such an ugly clay statue..No one was fooled..You could always see..The Buddha was always found out for the worthless clay thing is actually was.
Until…….
After more years had gone, the goldpaint was weathered and cracked and dirty, so one of the priests wanted to clean it and restore the thin veneer.
While busy with this task, he brushed too hard to remove some of the dirt, and a piece of clay fell off.
The priest saw something bright and shiny. It immediately sparkled in the sunlight. It wasn’ t until then that they discovered the true nature of the Buddha. It had always been pure gold., no matter what anyone had been thinking and had been doing.
The purest of gold.
As are the wonders of Blogadishu!
