The Blind Men And The Elephant

To my mind, of all the people who have retold the story of the blind men and the elephant since the Buddha, none have done better than John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887) in his poem of the same name. Read and enjoy.

It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.

The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!

The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, Ho! what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!

The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
I see, quoth he, the Elephant
Is very like a snake!

The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain, quoth he;
'Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: Even the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!?

The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
I see, quoth he, the Elephant
Is very like a rope!

And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!

Moral:

So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!

The Purblind And The Pachyderm

The parable of the blind men and the elephant is probably the most widely known and the most loved of all the world's parables. By far the earliest version of this parable is to be found in the Udana, one of the books of the Buddhist scriptures where it is attributed to the Buddha (Ud.67-9). There seems no good reason to doubt this attribution for while the blind men and the elephant is a most memorable one, it is by no means the only cleaver parable attributed to the Buddha. The parable's appeal is due to how well it makes its point, its striking juxtaposing of man and beast and its gentle humor.
The background to the Buddha telling this parable goes like this. Some monks in Savatthi noticed a group of non-Buddhist monks quarrelling with each other about some philosophical or theological issues. Later, they mentioned what they had seen to the Buddha and he said, 'Wanderers of other sects are blind and unseeing. They don’t know the good and the bad and they don’t know the true and the false. Consequently they are always quarrelling, arguing and fighting, wounding each other with the weapon of the tongue' Then the Buddha related his famous parable. 'Once here in Savatthi, the king called a certain man and said, "Assemble together in one place all the men in Savatthi who were born blind." Having done as the king commanded, the king then said to the man, "Now show the blind men an elephant." Again the man did as the king commanded, saying to each as he did, "Oh blind man, this is an elephant and this is its head. This is its ear. This is its tusk. This is its trunk. This is its body. This is its leg. This is its back. This is its tail. This is the end of its tail." This having been done the king addresses the blind men saying, "Have you seen an elephant?" and they replied "We have sire." "And what is an elephant like?" he asked. And the one who had touched the head said, "An elephant is like a pot." while the one who had touched the ear said, "An elephant is like a winnowing basket." The one who had touched the tusk said, "An elephant is like a plough pole" while the one who had touched the trunk said, "It is like a plough." The one who had touched the body said, "It is like a granary" and the one who had touched the leg said, "It is like a pillar." The one who had touched the back said, "It is like a mortar", the one who had touched the tail said, "It is like a pestle" while the one who had touched the end of the tail said, "An elephant is like a broom." Then they began to quarrel saying, "Yes it is!" "No it isn’t!" "An elephant is like this!" "An elephant is like that!" until eventually they began fighting with each other.' Having told this story the Buddha summed up its meaning in a terse little verse -

Some monks and priests are attached to their views
And having seized hold of them they wrangle,
Like those who see only one side of a thing.

The key to understanding the meaning of the parable is in the last line of this verse; seeing only one side of a thing (ekanga dassino). This is but one example of where the Buddha gives advice about how to form a more complete, a more accurate view of reality. Here he is suggesting one important point - that we should not mistake the part for the whole. In other places he advises keeping personal biases out of the way when assessing views, taking time to form opinions and even when having done so, keeping an open mind so as to be able to consider other points of view.
I notice that the Wikipedia article on this famous parable says that the blind men touch eight pachyderm parts while K. N. Jayatilleke (usually a very careful scholar) says there are ten. In fact, there are nine. I really love the Buddha's comparisons. You can see women using winnowing baskets (sup or supli in Hindi, suppa in Pali) is any Bihari village even today and they do look just like an elephant's ear. The elephant's tail and the broom is a good comparison too. The back with the pestle is less obvious. Could it be referring to the long ridge of the backbone which can so easily be seen under the elephant's skin?
After the Udana, the earliest mention of the parable of the blind men and the elephant is to be found in the Syadvadamanjari, a Jain work where it is used to illustrate the Jain doctrine of relativity of truth (anekantavada). This doctrine states that 'every view is true from some standpoint (naya) or other and in general no view can be categorically false.' Boy! Wouldn’t New Agers love this one if they knew of it! After this the blind men and their elephant run all over the place. They appear in Brahmanical and Hindu works, in some Persian collections of stories and even in one of the works of the Turkish Sufi mystic Rumi. Today there are numerous children's books about it or which include it. If you would like to see a careful and accurate word by word translation of the whole sutta in which the parable of the blind men and the elephant appears have a look at Venerable Anandajoti's www.ancient-buddhist-texts.net/Texts-and-Translations/Udana/6-Jaccandhavaggo-04.htm

Thank you Lord Buddha, for giving the world this wonderful story. May we not forget its message.

The picture is an 18th century Japanese illustration of the parable.

The Physics Of Hell

The following is an actual question given on university of Washington chemistry mid term paper. The answer by one student was so ‘profound’ that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well. 'Bonus question – Is hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?' Most of the students wrote proofs based on their individual beliefs and using Boyle’s Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when compresses). One student however, wrote the following -

First, we need to know how the mass of hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering hell, let’s look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect that the souls in hell to increase expeditiously. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in hell because Boyle’s Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in hell to stay the same, the volume of hell has to expand to stay the same the volume of hell has to expand proportionally as souls are added. This gives two possibilities; (1) If hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter hell, then the temperature and pressure in hell will increase and all hell will break loose. (2) If hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in hell, them the temperature and pressure will drop until hell freezes over. So which is it? If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, 'It will be a cold day in hell before I sleep with you' and take into account the fact that I did sleep with her last night, then the number two must be true, and thus I am sure that hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since hell has frozen over, it follows that no more souls are going there and it is therefore, extinct, leaving only heaven, thereby confirming the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting 'Oh my God!'

The student received an A

That pretty much exhausts the subject or hell and purgatory. From tomorrow I will move on to more important and useful subjects.

Go To Nirvana, Go Directly To Nirvana, Do Not Pass Go

Friends of mine have just developed an interesting Buddhist board game. In this challenging game, players move around the Wheel of Life by answering questions based on Dhamma, the life of the Buddha, and Buddhist history. The first player to complete the circle is the winner. The questions are grouped into four levels of difficulty, with 36 questions at each level. Questions are determined by a roll of a die. The game is ideal for Dhamma classes, English-as-a-second-language classes, families, and any group interested in learning about Buddhism. Have a look at it at www.brelief.org/bkq/announce.html

Going Willing To Hell

According to Mahayana, Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva has made a vow not to attain enlightenment until all beings have managed to get out of purgatory. To this end, he descends into purgatory and experiences all its pain and suffering just so he can teach the Dhamma to the beings there. In the Far East, Ksitigarbha is depicted as a monk with a gently smiling and serene countenance holding a kakarakkha (wayfarer's staff) in one hand and a wish-fulfilling gem in another. Images of him are often to be seen in cemeteries.
In Thailand and Laos there are many stories about an arahat named Phra Malai who is supposed to have come from Sri Lanka. According to popular legend, Phra Malai uses his supernormal powers to go into purgatory to teach the Dhamma with the same motives as Ksitigarbha. Generally I don’t have a very high opinion of popular Thai Buddhism but this is one of its manifestations that I do appreciate. It is interesting to consider the difference in the mentality and culture that produced the legend of the wrathful deity who condemns beings to eternal hell without hope or reprieve, and the ones that gave rise to the legends about Ksitigarbha and Phra Malai.
A study of the Phra Malai legend has just been published called Thai Telling of Phra Malai-Text and Rituals of a Popular Buddhist Saint by Bonnie Brerton. It is not particularly interesting (all anthropology, no Dhamma), but it will give you some idea about the beliefs and stories surrounding Phra Malai.

Limbo

From the very beginning Christianity taught that to be saved from hell it was necessary to be baptized. Although this was clear enough it gradually dawned on theologians that this doctrine gave rise to some very troubling questions. The most serious, not to say most embarrassing of these, was the question of what happened to babies who died at birth or soon after without being baptized. And of course this was not just a theoretical matter; until recently infant death was very common and many isolated farmhouses and remote villages did not have access to a priest who could perform the baptism. By the 13th century theologians developed (i.e. thought up) the idea of limbo. The word limbo comes from the Latin word meaning ‘edge’ and the place itself was believed to be near hell but not in it, where babies existed in a sort of state of suspended animation without experiencing the tortures of hell or the bliss of heaven. This never became an official doctrine of the Church but not having the ‘official’ stamp of approval probably didn’t make much difference to the average person. It was widely taught and most people believed it. One can only imagine how this idea compounded the grief and distress of already distraught parents whose child had just died and they had failed or not been able to get it baptized.
But now we know that all this grief and despair were unnecessary because the Church has recently announced that in fact there is no such place as limbo. In 1984 Cardinal Ratzinger, then in charge of the Vatican’s board of doctrine and now Pope Benedict XVI, announced that he was ‘personally’ in favor of scrapping the idea of limbo, which he termed a mere ‘hypothesis.’ In April 2007 he approved of a 41 page document drafted by the International Theological Commission which suggested abolishing the idea. It had taken the Commission two years to conclude their deliberations and announce their recommendations. ‘We cannot know with certainty what will happen when an unbaptized baby dies’, said Paul McParthian, ‘but we have good grounds to hope that God in his mercy and love looks after these children and brings them salvation.’ Mmm. Interesting. It seems to me that this solves one problem but creates another. If all unbelievers and even Christians who sin can be condemned to hell, but babies who die at birth are saved, then surely it would be better to die early than to survive infancy and perhaps be brought up as a Buddhist or become a sinner. Better still I suppose would be to be aborted before birth. I’m just a simple monk. I just don’t understand theology.
The picture above is, I believe, of limbo as imagined by a Baroque artist. It doesn't look too bad does it? But I wonder how that teenager snuck in. And what are those cats doing there? Perhaps some cold-hearted person drowned them before they were baptized.

The Petavatthu

As we are talking about hell I thought it only fair to have a look at the Petavatthu, the seventh book in the Khuddaka Nikaya which is the fifth collection of the Sutta Pitaka, one of the three divisions in the Tipitaka, the Buddhist scriptures. This text and its companion text, the Vimanavatthu, is easily the least interesting book in the whole Tipitaka and one can only wonder how it ever got included in it. The title means ‘Story of Ghosts’; peta = ghost + vatthu = story. It consists of about 814 verses embedded in prose stories. Only the verses are canonical. There are four chapters containing 12, 13, 10 and 16 stories each. The exact number of verses is unclear because it is sometimes hard to tell where the story ends and the verse begins. The stories tell of the mean, nasty or immoral things people did which led them to being reborn as a ghost. Without exception these stories are dull, rather puerile and even without literary merit. Winternitz commented, ‘The truly great and profound doctrine of kamma…which has found expression in…Buddhist texts in so many beautiful sayings and legends, is most clumsily explained by means of examples in little stories, whose metrical form is their only poetical attribute.’
And what about ghosts? The Rg Veda, the oldest Hindu scripture, speaks of the ‘realm of the fathers’ (pitarah), a sort of shadowy world where everyone went when they died. In later centuries this term fused with the term preta, ‘departed’ and led to the creation of the word peta and the idea of a ghostly realm or existence (Pali pettivisaya, later petaloka ‘ghost world’). Brahmanism later developed the idea that making offerings to ghosts could raise the quality of their gloomy existence. The Buddha mentioned that one of the reasons people wanted a son was so he could make offerings to them after they had died (A.III,43). A brahmin mentioned to the Buddha that he made saddha offerings to the departed (A.V,269), a practice you can still being done in Gaya to this day. The Buddha seems to have taken this belief for granted or at least saw that it might grow out of kindly motives and he encouraged some people to make offerings to the departed. Typically, he added an ethical dimension to the belief, saying that not everyone, but people who had been immoral might get reborn in the ghost world. He said, ‘By knowing his mind with mine, I have known a certain man who because of his behavior has taken such a path so that after the breaking up of the body he will be reborn as a ghost and will experience much painful feelings. It is just like a tree growing on rocky ground with sparse foliage and casting an uneven shadow. One man might see another, exhausted by the heat of the day, weary, parched and thirsty, going on a path that leads directly to that tree and later he would actually see him sitting or lying in the shade of that tree experiencing much discomfort’ (M.I,75). It seems that the early Buddhists incorporated the existing Brahminical belief in the ghost realm into their cosmology and then had to distinguish it from purgatory. They did this by saying that the committing of prolonged evil would result in rebirth in purgatory, lesser evil or evil associated with craving, longing and wanting would result in rebirth in the ghost realm.
Interestingly, the Buddha considered ‘talk about ghosts’ (petakatha) to be unedifying and unbecoming for serious Dhamma practitioners (D.I,8). The Petavatthu would by any interpretation qualify as ‘talk about ghosts.’ It is also interesting to note that the Thai Sangha has never recognized either the Petavatthu or the Vimanavatthu as canonical. All scholars who have examined the Petavatthu – Rhys Davids, H. S. Gehman and Prof. Abhayanayaka – ascribe to it a late date. Winternitz wrote that it ‘probably belongs to the latest stratum of literature assembled in the Pali Canon.’
The pictures are of petas as imagined by medieval Japanese artists.