The Five Blind Men & the Elephant

Once upon a time, there lived five blind men in a village. One day the villagers told them, “Hey, there is an elephant in the village today.”

These men had no idea what an elephant was, and thier curioustly compelled them to go examine the creature.  Without sight, they used their sense of touch to determine it’s nature. 

“Hey, the elephant is like a pillar,” said the first man who touched his leg.

“Oh, no! it is like a rope,” said the second man who touched the tail.

“Oh, no! it is like a thick branch of a tree,” said the third man who touched the trunk of the elephant.

“It is like a big hand fan” said the fourth man who touched the ear of the elephant.

“It is like a huge wall,” said the fifth man who touched the side of the elephant.

Frustrated with their diferences, they began to argue about the elephant and everyone of them insisted that he was right. It looked like they were getting agitated.

A wise man was passing by and he saw this. He stopped and asked them, “What is the matter?”

They said, “We cannot agree to what the elephant is like.” Each one of them told what he thought the elephant was like.

The wise man calmly explained to them, “All of you are right.

The reason every one of you is telling it differently because each one of you touched the different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all those features what you all said.”

✼　 ҉ 　✼　 ҉ 　✼

The parable of the blind men and an elephant is a story of a group of blind men who have never come across an elephant before and who learn and imagine what the elephant is like by touching it.

The elephant is my family system.

The elephant is religion/spirituality/science/art

The elephant is the universe.

The elephant is me (and you).

The problem with the five blind men is they were all fighting each other, and they were all right.

The five men represent the five major world religions.

Their blindness is a metaphor for close-mindedness.