Wednesday 19 October 2011

The Blind men and the Elephant (Buddha Truth parable)-Part 1

This is a story about what is Truth?
Long Long ago there was a great saint and enlightened person by name Buddha.this is the story which was famous as his parable and has been repeated plenty times throughout the eastern and European worlds to explain the nature of Truth.
There were 4 persons who belonged to 4 different faiths. They were always arguing and fighting among themselves.All of them heard that Buddha the learned one was passing by their village.So all of them went up to him and asked him which of their faith is true.The Great Buddha said before he tell them ,which version of faith is the truth he wanted them to hear this story :
There were once 4 blind men who were passing through a forest and stumbled upon an elephant.One of the Blind man hold the trunk of the elephant and then said" Elephant is like a pillar .The other hold on to the tusk of the elephant and said elephant is like a long sharp sword. The other blind man hold on to the legs of the elephant and said elephant is like a huge wall. The other one hold on to the tail of the elephant and said that elephant is like a rope.All of them started fighting among themselves that their version of elephant is truth,when finally a person who could actually see and was not blind passed through the forest and saw all of 4 blind men fighting among themselves and enquired why they were doing so ?
 when he heard what they said he laughed and said all of them were true and elephant was all of that.All the blind men thought that because this man could see he was making fun of them .
Buddha saying the above story said most of us are like those blind people who only experience the truth(God) in our own way and describe it in our own way like those blind people and think only our version of truth is the right one but in truth all of us are just explaining only one aspect of the whole truth .The aim of all human life is to realize Truth (like that the man who could see the elephant ) and understand that different faiths are just describing only different aspects of the same truth (God) .He then said the most important truth which according to me forms the center of all Buddha's teaching and Life
(To be contd..)

1 comment:

  1. What an inspirational story.. Please keep updating more and more stories

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