The Blind Men and the Elephant
The Teaching
Go, thou, and collect all the men born blind in Savatthi and bring them here. … Tell me then, O blind men, what an elephant is like.
An elephant, Sir, is like a large round jar. … It is like a winnowing basket. … It is like a plough-share. … It is like a plough. … It is like a granary. … It is like a pillar. … It is like a mortar. … It is like a broom.
And they all fought amongst themselves with their fists, declaring, “Such is an elephant, such is not elephant, an elephant is not like that, it is like this.”
Well is it known that some Samanas and Brahmanas, Who attach themselves to methods of analysis, And perceiving only one side of a case, Disagree with one another.
— Udāna 6.4
Commentary
In the Buddha’s telling, the story is a joke at the expense of the religious debaters of the Buddha’s day. A king has every man born blind in the city led to an elephant, and each is given one part to feel. Each one reports honestly: the head is a jar, the ear a winnowing basket, the tusk a ploughshare, the trunk a plough. Then they come to blows.
None of them is lying, and none of them is wrong about what they touched. Each mistakes a part for the whole and then fights to defend it. The Buddha’s verse is aimed at people who should know better, holy men who each hold one side of the case.
Every metaphor is one hand on the elephant. A good image is true to the part it touches, and the trouble only starts when it’s taken for the whole animal. That’s the reason the traditions kept so many images in play at once: the raft and the finger, the salt and the seed, the garment and the cave.
Themes
Connections 6
Travelled
The story itself travelled: from India, through the Persian poet Sanā’ī (12th c.), to Rumi.
Arose apart
No known transmission between Buddhism and Sikhism while these teachings took shape. Buddhism had largely vanished from Punjab by Guru Nanak’s time.
Unsure
Buddhism reached Greeks in India: Ashoka’s Greek edicts at Kandahar, King Menander questioning a monk (Milindapañha), and Greek donors to Buddhist monasteries. Greek art shaped Gandharan Buddhism. No Buddhist influence on Greek philosophy is documented; it has been argued for Pyrrho.