I’m the Elephant in the Room

Nowadays, one of the largest mammals on Earth seems to be in almost every gathering. Right in the middle of it. This creature appears to be chewing on hundreds of pounds of fruit, grass, and leaves, while many of us in the space pretend to be completely oblivious to its massive presence. Call it climate urgency, the rise of fascism, the assault on critical thinking, or the attack on progressive education, as celebrity culture—including art as spectacle—captures the last strand of collective attention. To notice the pachyderm would pretty much bring the party to a halt. Otherwise, continuing with business as usual would highlight the comment made by a newspaper article I recently read, saying something like, “What we are experiencing at the moment chronicles the destruction of our planet.”

In the Buddhist dharma of The Blind Men and the Elephant, a group of men [sic] discusses life, the body and the nature of the world. Should I say, their world? The response of each supposedly enlightened brahman, wanderer and recluse is shaped as a categorical statement meant to fit their own sectarian tenets. In more than two thousand years or so not much has changed. Translate this into many of the religious or political leaders of our day and the same debate could be happening now, while the elephant’s tusks nudge them so that the four-legged one in attendance can get to the berries piled in the corner. Before I move deeper into the Buddhist text prompting this brief essay, I seek to disinvest from the ableist and patriarchal elements in it. Maleness and ableism are as real as the issue that this Buddhist dharma seeks to address.

I will venture into a reading of The Blind Men and the Elephant that proposes an expansive approach to seeing, contrary to the preferential yet narrow status given to the sense of sight. To this extent, I argue that sight is not circumscribed to what can be experienced with the eyes, but that there are many ways of making visible to oneself and others that which might be grasped with hands, through skin, and in partnership with, let’s say, hearing or tasting. Aren’t the men engrossed in discussing existential topics in the first part of The Blind Men and the Elephant serving as a point of reference to their “blind” theological orthodoxy, independently of whether they can literally see or not? This question is a good opportunity to narrate what happens next in this dharma.

A king in Savatthi, the name of an ancient Indian city, the capital of Kosala, and where the Buddha is said to have lived through a series of rainy seasons, asks a man to bring to him all people blind from birth in his area. One by one, the blind are directed to come in contact with one specific part of the elephant in the room: the head, the tusks, the tail, or the trunk, to name a few. When asked, they describe the creature based on whatever section of the enormous body they have been directed to. The scene concludes with a fight among participants as to the definition of the subject they encountered. Each compared the elephant to an object or item they were familiar with, instead of taking in its wondrous wholeness. I gather that this is meant to teach me about the repercussions of complacency in matters of opinions not only dealing with life, the world and the body, but also in regard any other silos that I can easily come to inhabit and isolate myself in. I therefore ponder, as to how this story would or could be re-written today with the intention of counteracting ableism and getting to comprehend “blindness” as a lack of awareness, or more so, as a hindrance to becoming cognizant of my and our collective social-mental-spiritual narrowness? It is clear that this last point is at the core of this Buddhist teaching and that the text is meant to act as a metaphor. However, what references other than seeing with the eyes can be deployed to get to the same realization or learning?

Pachyderms are characterized by having thick skin, a synonym for callousness, but in the case of elephants, they are the opposite of insensitive. They express empathy, experience grief and establish tight bonds with their kin and even with so-called “humans.” The elephant in the room is a wise teacher and not a hindrance. So, if I were to push this dharma reflection into the present, and I were the one asking someone to fetch those who cannot see, I would ask for them to bring me our politicians and religious leaders, most of them who happen to be men. I would then proceed to set them in a space where they could be directed at making connection with their own bodies, from the feel of their skin, to its temperature and to what lies beneath it—the reminder of our impermanence—and as to how they would articulate what they “saw” with their hands. I might let them fight to later inquire about the scope of their quarrel: Who and what was being defended? Whose safety was being preserved? Who are they now in a room full of wounds and a substance in common, blood? I would do away all together with bringing an actual elephant into the room. I would let this endangered species roam freely where it would not have to be named after our narrow comprehension of the wonder of life, the body and the world. I would then enter a quest for consciousness that would allow me to have my hand, eye, taste, smell, hearing, intuition travel all around and far beyond the part of the elephant in me that I have been told to name. From there, I would continue to extend my journey into my surroundings. It is in this flux where I hope to overcome any self-righteousness and give way into a cosmic perspective.

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