In my last blog, Using Wise Effort To Live As Your Best Self As We Move Through The Holidays And Into The New Year, I focused on applying a firm hand of kindness and wise effort as defined by the Buddha in the noble eightfold path to guide us in moving away from over-efforting, as so many of us do, while kindly and compassionately using a firm hand of kindness to help keep us accountable to those aspects of our lives that help us live as the highest version of ourselves. 

To learn more about the eightfold noble path, particularly the prescription of wise effort, and the firm hand of kindness and how to apply these principles to your life, I invite you to visit the blog here. 

Bringing Your Inherent Goodness To Light 

Throughout the eightfold path and by using wise effort, the Buddha is asking us to remember the essence of our inherent goodness and to bring that goodness to light, to be in that light, to be the light and then to shine our light.

Given the shift into a new year, in which many people are still reeling in both internal and external struggles that might feel dark, I can think of no better time to call on us to be the light. I'm reminded of the 13th century Persian poet and mystic, Rumi, who offers us this wisdom: "If everything around you seems dark, look again ... you may be the light."

Much like in the well-known story of the chipping of the Golden Buddha statue, we are being called to do our own chipping, from the inside out, so as to let go of the thoughts and behaviors that impede us from shining in our fullness. 

For those of you unfamiliar with the chipping of the Golden Buddha story, author, psychologist and meditation teacher Tara Branch explains it beautifully in her 2021 book Trusting the Gold: Uncovering Your Natural Goodness. It goes like this: 

“During the mid-1950s in Bangkok, a huge clay statue of the Buddha began to crack due to heat and drought. When some monks arrived to investigate, they shined a flashlight into the largest of the cracks. What they saw surprised everyone. Deep under the gray clay was the gleam of gold.

No one had known that inside this popular but ordinary looking statue was a solid gold Buddha. As it turns out, the statue had been covered with plaster and clay six hundred years earlier to protect it from invading armies. Although all the monks who lived in the monastery at that time had been killed in the attack, the golden Buddha, its beauty and value covered over, had survived untouched.

Just as the monks disguised the beauty of the golden Buddha in order to protect it during dangerous times, we cover our own innate purity and goodness as we encounter a challenging world.”

A couple of paragraph’s down, she continues:

“The basic teachings of the Buddha awaken us to who we are. They begin with learning to recognize the Truth of our experience by opening to life, just as it is. Then we discover how to awaken our inherent capacity to meet this ever-changing life with Love. This unfolding of presence and love reveals the Freedom of our true nature.

Even though the gold of your true nature can get buried beneath fear, uncertainty, and confusion, the more you trust this loving presence as the truth of who you are, the more fully you will call it forth in yourself, and in all those you touch. And in our communities, as we humans increasingly remember that gold, we’ll treat each other and all beings with a growing reverence and love.”

I believe that there are times when we are called upon to do our OWN chipping—our own unearthing of ourselves—and to remember the golden light that lies within. We are called to let go of thoughts and behaviors that impede our shining in our fullness, (re)awaken to who we truly are, and then break free!

This breaking free and the shining of our golden light is the fundamental essence of what the Buddha wanted for each of us. According to writings that detail his last moments before his death, as he lay on his side, between two trees,  he offered his very last words/instructions to his community on the importance of accepting the reality of impermanence. “All compounded things are subject to decay.  Strive on!” Another interpretation of his final words are, “With firm resolve, guard your own mind.” 

Through these words, the Buddha is guiding us to be mindful to the impermanence of life itself—and therefore to keep in mind the moment-to-moment experiencing of loving awareness. By keeping ourselves focusing on the present, deepening into the present, and expanding into the present, we become ever more appreciative, alive and awake.   

I take the Buddha's sage advice as beautiful prescriptions on how to break free from conditions that do not serve our highest selves, to protect our minds (and hearts) once we’ve made that break and how to uncover, remember and shine the light that we all innately hold within. The invitation is to release oneself from that which does not support wellbeing and then use wise effort , self-compassion, and the other prescriptions described in the eightfold noble path to foster wisdom, kindness, compassion, love and light. 

In The Words Of Mary Oliver

I’ve always been inspired by  Mary Oliver’s interpretation of the Buddha’s last teaching, eloquently described in her poem, “The Buddha's Last Instruction.” Through her understanding of the essence of all that the Buddha taught, she imagines that the Buddha invites each of us to “make yourself a light.” What a glorious request!  As a light, we get to share warmth and brightness with others. As a light, we get to embrace self-love. As a light, we get to shine bright into the world around us with love, warmth and compassion. Oliver’s phrase, “make of yourself a light,” is something that I’ve incorporated into my own meditation practice. Perhaps her words will speak to you as well. 

My invitation and wish for each of us in 2022 is that we can keep chipping away, from the inside-out, at the mud and muck, and expose the bright light that shines within us all. 

I’ll leave you with Oliver’s beautiful poem here…

The Buddha's Last Instruction
by Mary Oliver

“Make of yourself a light,”
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal -- a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.
An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire --
clearly I'm not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.

Here’s to honoring the dark, the light and everything in between. 
New Year’s Blessings to you all. 

For those of you interested in a meditation designed to guide you in uncovering your innate goodness and being the light, check out my Make Of Yourself A Light guided audio meditation practice found free for download on the Mindfulness Meditations Recordings page on my website.