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Posted On: October 23rd 2026, 06:49 pm
From time to time, it is wise to ask yourself, “What is this frenzied pursuit that I’m on?”
Think about it: Where in your day-to-day life are you not encouraged to chase something? More money, a better body, a bigger home, supercharged productivity, enhanced attractiveness, and endless optimization. It seems innocuous, but perhaps that is only because the vast majority of people have not challenged it.
It seems and feels as though this state of being is birthed from a diminished perspective of how you see yourself.
Ancient wisdom and modern research may explain why.
There is a story of a temple that kept a great Buddha that appeared to be made of clay. Long ago, when an army was marching toward the village, the monks covered their most precious statue in plaster and mud so the invaders would pass it by. The temple was spared, but the monks who knew the secret did not survive, and for generations the Buddha sat plain and unremarkable. Then one day, as the statue was being moved, it slipped and cracked. That night a young monk came to check on it and saw a faint light glowing through the break. He picked up a chisel and began to chip away.
Beneath the clay, the Buddha was solid gold. It had been gold all along.
Modern science offers its own glimpse of the gold. In studies by psychologist Kiley Hamlin, babies as young as six months watched a puppet try to climb a hill while one character helped it and another pushed it down. Asked to choose, the babies overwhelmingly reached for the helper (Hamlin et al., 2007).
Before language, before culture, before anyone taught them, they leaned toward goodness.
One story ancient, one study modern, and both point to the same quiet truth. The belief that we are insufficient, that we are somehow lacking at our core, is the clay, not the statue. Yet we spend our lives chasing, as if wholeness must be built from scratch, when all along it was only buried.
The gold is already there. The work is not to add more, but to clear away what was never you.
References:
Hamlin, J. K., Wynn, K., & Bloom, P. (2007). Social evaluation by preverbal infants. Nature, 450(7169), 557–559
Think about it: Where in your day-to-day life are you not encouraged to chase something? More money, a better body, a bigger home, supercharged productivity, enhanced attractiveness, and endless optimization. It seems innocuous, but perhaps that is only because the vast majority of people have not challenged it.
It seems and feels as though this state of being is birthed from a diminished perspective of how you see yourself.
Ancient wisdom and modern research may explain why.
There is a story of a temple that kept a great Buddha that appeared to be made of clay. Long ago, when an army was marching toward the village, the monks covered their most precious statue in plaster and mud so the invaders would pass it by. The temple was spared, but the monks who knew the secret did not survive, and for generations the Buddha sat plain and unremarkable. Then one day, as the statue was being moved, it slipped and cracked. That night a young monk came to check on it and saw a faint light glowing through the break. He picked up a chisel and began to chip away.
Beneath the clay, the Buddha was solid gold. It had been gold all along.
Modern science offers its own glimpse of the gold. In studies by psychologist Kiley Hamlin, babies as young as six months watched a puppet try to climb a hill while one character helped it and another pushed it down. Asked to choose, the babies overwhelmingly reached for the helper (Hamlin et al., 2007).
Before language, before culture, before anyone taught them, they leaned toward goodness.
One story ancient, one study modern, and both point to the same quiet truth. The belief that we are insufficient, that we are somehow lacking at our core, is the clay, not the statue. Yet we spend our lives chasing, as if wholeness must be built from scratch, when all along it was only buried.
The gold is already there. The work is not to add more, but to clear away what was never you.
References:
Hamlin, J. K., Wynn, K., & Bloom, P. (2007). Social evaluation by preverbal infants. Nature, 450(7169), 557–559
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