O how they cling and wrangle, some who claim

October 24th, 2006 2:33 pm by BlackWhite

Yesterday, one of my disciples came to me and said, “O enlightened one, there are living here in misual.com, many wandering hermits and scholars who indulge in constant dispute, some saying that marriage outside the Mizo community is out of the question, some saying that Microsoft is the best, some saying that the soul dies with the body and others that it lives on forever, and so forth. What, Sir, would you say concerning them?”

I decided to tell her a stroy.

“Once upon a time there was a certain king who called to his servant and said, ‘Come, good fellow, go and gather together in one place all the men of the village who were born blind… and show them an elephant.’ ‘Very good, sire,’ replied the servant, and he did as he was told. He said to the blind men assembled there, ‘Here is an elephant,’ and to one man he presented the head of the elephant, to another its ears, to another a tusk, to another the trunk, the foot, back, tail, and tuft of the tail, saying to each one that that was the elephant.

“When the blind men had felt the elephant, the king went to each of them and said to each, ‘Well, blind man, have you seen the elephant? Tell me, what sort of thing is an elephant?’

“Thereupon the men who were presented with the head answered, ‘Sire, an elephant is like a pot.’ And the men who had observed the ear replied, ‘An elephant is like a winnowing basket.’ Those who had been presented with a tusk said it was a ploughshare. Those who knew only the trunk said it was a plough; others said the body was a grainery; the foot, a pillar; the back, a mortar; the tail, a pestle, the tuft of the tail, a brush.

“Then they began to quarrel, shouting, ‘Yes it is!’ ‘No, it is not!’ ‘An elephant is not that!’ ‘Yes, it’s like that!’ and so on, till they came to blows over the matter.

“Brethren, the king was delighted with the scene.

“Just so are these preachers and scholars holding various views blind and unseeing…. In their ignorance they are by nature quarrelsome, wrangling, and disputatious, each maintaining reality is thus and thus.”

Then, finally, I rendered this meaning by uttering this verse of uplift given by the Buddha,

O how they cling and wrangle, some who claim
For preacher and monk the honored name!
For, quarreling, each to his view they cling.
Such folk see only one side of a thing.

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15 Responses to “O how they cling and wrangle, some who claim”

  1. 1
    dear_diary Says:

    But BW..ignorance is bliss!! :)

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  2. 2
    benjamin Says:

    one of my disciples came

    When is your next enrollment opening?

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  3. 3
    gingerbluff Says:

    BlackWhite wrote:one of my disciples came
    I would also love to be ur deciple,please make the form available at misual.com when there’s an opening.I wll be the 1st one to apply.he..he..

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  4. 4
    Goldmember Says:

    down girl down…. when blackwhite wrote “came” he didnt mean the other meaning …. :)

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  5. 5
    J Says:

    Verily, BW my son, you speaketh fine words of wisdom. There are indeedy 13 ways of looking at a blackbird. And fifty ways to leave your lover. Let’s all just live and let live. Cheers

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  6. 6
    gingerbluff Says:

    Goldmember i didn’t quite catch that.U mean the deciples that BlackWhite meant when he use the word “came” was something to do with below the waist???I heard only 1 deciple can find its way to Home Sweet Home…ha…ha…

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  7. 7
    Goldmember Says:

    its a joke… dontcha worry…

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  8. 8
    BlackWhite Says:

    Alas, my lady, the admissions are closed…

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  9. 9
    C0dy Says:

    No doubt all the men who see the elephant were blind…Do you mean to say we all misuals are blind? eh…

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  10. 10
    C0dy Says:

    No doubt all the men who went to see the elephant were blind :))…Do you mean to say we all misuals are blind? eh…

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  11. 11
    jazz Says:

    nice post…….lolzz mahse a post tu nen hian a inhmeh lo khop mai

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  12. 12
    SiLent_Man Says:

    Does buddhists consider Buddha to be a god. What was Buddha’s view on himself?

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  13. 13
    BlackWhite Says:

    I could talk at length about it.
    But this article is good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism
    BTW, the buddhism that is followed by the Chinese/Japanese is different from the one that is followed by folks in Tibet/Bhutan (the rituals are quite similar to Hinduism) and again, the buddhism practised in S.East asia is different from the one followed elsewhere. (notice the difference in the color of the robes worn by the monks in SE asia to that of the one worn by buddhist monks in tibet).

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  14. 14
    SiLent_Man Says:

    Rastrafarian ho (an ti emoni kha) an tha ber mai. Ethiopian lal kha an Pathian biak ve hmiah mai a, aniin kei ka ni e a ti pawh ni hawt silo. An lung a awi ve em em tho

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  15. 15
    tiger Says:

    well, all i know is the buddhists are peaceful, thats a fact. whether they be in Tibet or McLeod Ganj, peaceful they really are.

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