The Golden Thread

The Monk Who Carved a Thousand Smiles


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Harmonia is wandering the Metropolitan Museum of Art when a small, rough-hewn wooden figure stops her cold --- a smiling Fud My carved in 1805 by an eighty-seven year old wandering monk named Mokujiki Shnin. She traces his extraordinary life: a farmer's son who took a lifelong vow to eat only forest food, walked the roads of Japan for decades, and carved more than a thousand Buddhist statues --- leaving each one freely in temples and villages across the country, asking nothing in return. Through Mokujiki's story, Harmonia explores a timeless and radical idea: that work made in the spirit of service is itself a form of worship, that the sacred has never required credentials or institutions, and that an open hand and a whole heart have always been enough.

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The Golden ThreadBy Adam Bauer