At the nunnery today, my guest looked at the 1,000-armed Avalokiteshvara statue and said, “I don't think it really has 1,000 arms and 1,000 eyes.”
I smiled and said, “That's interesting — no one's ever said that to me before. But I believe it does. Want to count?”
He quickly waved me off. “Nah, let's just forget it.”
There was a nun next to me. I told her that my guest doesn't believe it has 1,000 arms. Without hesitation, she replied: “It has 1,000 arms because we repaint it every 10 years.”
Still skeptical, he said, “But what if they lose track while counting?”
I translated for the nun. She calmly replied, “We use gold to paint. Each arm requires a specific amount of gold. We measure the gold carefully, so we know it's exactly 1,000.”
When I told him what the nun said, he went quiet — probably realizing that arguing against math and gold was a losing battle.
The nun won.