Hoa Vo Uu (Buddha Dharma Education Association)
Venerable Shravasti Dhammika
The Buddha’s Words of Wisdom
While on tour, the Lord arrived in due course at Pãrileyya, and there he stayed at the Guarded Woodland Thicket at the foot of a beautiful sal tree. And as he meditated alone, this thought arose in the Lord’s mind: “Before, when I was beset by those monks of Kosambĩ, those makers of contention, quarrels, arguments, and fights, those makers of legal questions within the Sangha; I did not abide in comfort. But now that I am alone, without another, removed from those contentious monks, I do abide in comfort.”
Now, at that time, a certain large bull elephant was beset by other elephants, she-elephants, calves and babes. Then it occurred to that elephant: “Now, I am beset by these other elephants, I eat grass already cropped by them, they eat the branches I break off, I drink water they have muddied and when I cross over the ford they pushed against my body. What if I were to live alone, secluded from the herd.”
So, the elephant left the herd and went to Pãrileyya, to the Guarded Woodland Thicket and the beautiful sal tree where the Lord was. Using his trunk, he provided the Lord with water for drinking and washing, and he kept the grass down. Then it occurred to the elephant: “Before, when I was beset by those elephants, I did not abide in comfort. But now that I am alone, without another, removed from the herd, I do abide in comfort.” Then, having understood his own seclusion and the mind of elephant, the Lord uttered this verse:
In this both mighty beings agree,
The enlightened sage and the elephant,
With tusks resembling the poles of ploughs –
Both love the solitude of the forest.
