I sat under a chestnut tree a few days ago.  On the ground before me lay some green pods, each no doubt containing a shiny, reddish-brown chestnut.  I picked one up and took it home.  Voilà:

The brownish-green round thing looked pretty ordinary.  Nothing special.  But I knew what was inside.  A time would come when I’d break it open.

This reminded me of a story told by Jack Kornfield, a Buddhist teacher:

In a large temple north of Thailand’s ancient capital, Sukotai, there once stood an enormous and ancient clay Buddha … At one point the monks who tended the temple noticed that the statue had begun to crack … After a stretch of particularly hot, dry weather, one of the cracks became so wide that a curious monk took his flashlight and peered inside.  What shone back at him was a flash of brilliant gold!  Inside this plain old statue, the temple residents discovered one of the largest and most luminous gold images of Buddha ever created in Southeast Asia.

Unlike the monk, I was sure about what was inside.  But it was time to see the magnificent colour.  I took a knife and cut around the pod, then pulled the two halves apart.  Take a look …

“I guess the brilliant red is one layer down.  I’ll pry the rough outer nut apart to reveal the glory.”

The nut didn’t pry.  I scrubbed off the dirt and stared.  Could it be?  >  “This is it.”  There’s nothing else.

I stared some more.

Oh.  This is a walnut, which did not come from a chestnut tree.  Oops … wrong again.

And I wondered … Do I have the eyes to see the beauty of the object before me, even though there was no shine and no red?

The answer came …

Not yet