An Atheist Explores the Dhammapada Part 24: The Universal Truth: There Will Be War Elephants (The Elephant/Nagavagga)

Dhammapada Part Twenty Three: The Elephant  (Nagavagga)

The Universal Truth: There Will Be War Elephants.

“As an elephant in the battlefield withstands arrows shot from bows all around, even so shall I endure abuse. There are many, indeed, who lack virtue.”

Welcome to the next instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Dhammapada).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the Dhammapada, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.

For more detail, see the introductory post https://bit.ly/3IbwtwE

For the online Dhammapada that I use, see here https://bit.ly/3IgCiJr

And now:

Dhammapada Part Twenty Three: The Elephant  (Nagavagga)

War elephants in the Qur’an, war elephants in the books of the Maccabees. Did war elephants get mentioned in the armies of the Bhagavad Gita? I don’t recall off hand, but I bet they crop up in the Mahabharat as a whole. And now, war elephants again.

Does this mean that if there is a universal truth running through all of these sacred text traditions, it’s war elephants?

But what this section really does is take the concept of the elephant and run with it for a series of similes about controlling the mind (“as a mahout controls with his ankus an elephant in rut”), to prefer solitude over the company of fools (“Better it is to live alone; there is no fellowship with a fool. Live alone and do no evil; be carefree like an elephant in the elephant forest”), to patiently endure troubles (“A tamed elephant is led into a crowd, and the king mounts a tamed elephant. Best among men is the subdued one who endures abuse”), and even to “Draw yourself out of this bog of evil, even as an elephant draws himself out of the mud”.

The elephant is also used as a counterexample – “Musty during rut, the tusker named Dhanapalaka is uncontrollable. Held in captivity, the tusker does not touch a morsel, but only longingly calls to mind the elephant forest”. Such an uncontrollable elephant, suffering under his desires, is likened to a man who is “sluggish and gluttonous, sleeping and rolling around in bed like a fat domestic pig”. Why a specific elephant named Dhanapalaka? I looked this one up, and there’s a Buddhist story that some opponents of the Buddha tried to kill him by letting a musth elephant called Dhanapalaka run loose when the Buddha was visiting a city, but the Buddha calmed the elephant with just a word and a gesture. 

I guess in this case, then, Dhanapalaka is a specific reference to unchecked passions and violence being held in abeyance by the teachings of the Buddha. And it’s a cool name that I’m totally nicking.

So, be like an elephant, but not too much like an elephant.

This chapter is as much interesting for the insights it gives into the uses of elephants at the time as it does for any great spiritual wisdom. In that respect, it doesn’t tell us much that hasn’t already gone before – seek out wise friends instead of fools, and seek to remove attachments if you want to “travel to the Untrodden Land”, another euphemism for Nibbana.

Finally the last three verses give us a list of things that are good, which include friends when the need arises, contentment with what one has, to serve one’s parents and holy men, virtue, steadfast faith, the acquisition of wisdom and, really helpful this one, “good is the avoidance of evil”.

Thanks.

I’d say that “Good is virtue” is also useless and tautological. Because then one has to ask, “what is virtue”, and perhaps we get something equally as unhelpful like Aristotle declaring that virtue is what a virtuous person does. And round in the circle we go again.