Being Mindful Stories

Story · Ajahn Brahm

The king's elephant and the thieves

As told by Ajahn Brahm in Elephant Story - the importance of being with peaceful people | Ajahn Brahm

3 min read

Content note: citation unverified (identified by reviewer)

The story — as told by Ajahn Brahm (verbatim captions)

this old story from the time of the Buddha, it's one of my favourite stories, of this elephant. And this elephant was a really nice elephant. He belonged to the king. Now, in those days elephants were like your Mercedes or BMWs. You know, that's what you used to travel around the place with. So if you had a really good elephant, that was like having like a Ferrari car or something, your prized vehicle. And so he was a really nice elephant and always been very obedient and very compliant. Until one day, the elephant started getting a bit cranky. You know, it wouldn't do what he was told. And he would not, sort of, go where he was asked to go, and start to really mess around. Just like when the elephant keeper was cleaning up, you know, behind the elephant, that's when the elephant would poo all over the elephant keeper. If you've seen how much an elephant poos, that's a lot of poo. So the people looking after the elephant thought: ‘The elephant must be sick, it must have some sort of virus or something, that it's misbehaving; it's not its usual character’. And they took the elephant doctor there – so it was a girl elephant – they took the elephant doctor there and they tried everything and nothing worked, and then they maybe thought it was the elephant equivalent of menopause, you know what it’s like, sometimes. (laughter) Anyway, elephants don't have menopause. (laughter) And it was just… they couldn't figure out what was wrong with this elephant. And so in the end… according to this story, the Buddha's previous life, he was a minister and he said ‘I'll check this out’. So what he did was actually go to the elephant stall and just stay there overnight, trying to find out what was going on. In the middle of the night he was woken up, the minister. There was some sort of weird sound behind the elephant stall in the middle of the night. Now, if you woke up in the middle of the night and you heard weird sounds from behind your cottage, would you go outside to check or would you hide under your blankets? (laughter) Number one, you don't have anything to fear around here, Ajahn Brahm’s here, so you're perfectly safe, guaranteed, money-back guarantee. And you don't pay any money anyway. Well, except the deposit which is a donation, but you can get that back if you really want to, but you're perfectly safe. So he decided to go and check it out. So he crept round the back of the elephant stall, and what he found there – there was a gang. You know, these bad people, you know, robbing and extorting money from others. They were meeting there every evening, because it was quiet, to plan all the stuff they were gonna do that evening. And he realized the cause of the elephant's problems. Because the elephant was actually picking up on what they call ‘the bad vibes’ of these crooks and gangsters. Even though the elephant couldn't understand, you know, the English or whatever language they were saying, still he could pick up, sort of, the character of these bad people. And night after night after night, the elephant had picked up this bad character and had started to become a bad elephant himself or herself. And the minister just had all those gangsters arrested the next night, he told the king, and he replaced them with monks! So the monks had to meet there every evening, you know, do some meditation, a bit of chanting, discussing of Dhamma and stuff like that. And after a few days the elephant came back to its normal character. Just because of the good influence of others

▶ Watch Ajahn Brahm tell it from 0:01 (to 3:46)

A reflection (in the spirit of Ajahn Brahm's talk)

A king's gentle elephant turned wild because thieves met beside its stall each night to plot. Replace them with chanting, meditating monks, and it calmed again. We soak up the company and talk around us. If you've grown edgy and grumpy, look at who and what you're spending your evenings with.

In brief (our summary)

A king's fine elephant turns wilful and troublesome, and no trainer can fix it. A wise minister camps by its stall and discovers that thieves meet behind it every night to plan robberies; their negative talk has changed the elephant's character. The thieves are arrested, and the king has monks meditate, chant and discuss Dhamma behind the stall each evening for weeks — and the elephant becomes peaceful and calm like the monks.

Teaching point

Our minds are conditioned by the company and environment we keep.

When this story may help

  • bad influences
  • choosing friends
  • changing character

Themes

Source & credit

Told by Ajahn Brahm in Elephant Story - the importance of being with peaceful people | Ajahn Brahm · 2018-09-13 · ▶ watch from 0:01 to 3:46 · Buddhist Society of Western Australia

7 other tellings of this story

Caption notes: YouTube auto-captions with machine-added punctuation; words left exactly as captioned.

The narrative is Ajahn Brahm's own telling, quoted from the talk captions. The summary and reflection are Being Mindful Stories's editorial notes. Please credit the teacher and link the original talk. Markdown version

  • Free coffee for meditating by the corpse

    In brief: In Thailand, where people fear ghosts and fresh corpses, the young Western monk announces he will meditate beside a body and is plied with…

    Read full story

    I remember once when I think it was Ajahn Chah's brother that died and was being cremated, I told one of the monks - I'm just going to go and do some meditation by the corpse. He said "what?!" I said "I'm going to do some meditation by the..". He said "have a cup of coffee". I thought - that's really nice. And I couldn't understand why they were giving me all this coffee. And the reason way they were so impressed that anybody could sit in meditation next to a newly dead corpse, because they were just so afraid of that. So once I found that out, I always went to say I'm going to sit by a corpse, and they brought all this nice coffee. [laughter]. A bit of a scam because I wasn't afraid.

    Open story page·Watch this telling

  • The cult-buster who ran from the Buddha statue

    In brief: In the early North Perth centre, Western Australia's chief 'cult buster' comes to check the Buddhists out; charmed by the very Australian…

    Read full story

    I remember one time this man came, he was a Christian, he was the head cult buster in Western Australia. He was checking us out to see whether we were a cult who indoctrinated people and sort of took over their minds. Well, we do indoctrinate people, but we actually free their minds rather than take them over. When he came in he was met by our caretaker who was a very wonderful girl, and so Australian and so charming he thought, "This can't be a cult," until he went into the room and saw the big Buddha statue. He ran out in fear, he was terrified just because it's a simple Buddha statue. Now you can go in the room next door and see that Buddha statue, and all the time which I've seen that, it has never moved, it's never bitten, it's never done anything, it's just sat there.

    Open story page·Watch this telling

  • The Tibetan monk who never got to speak

    In brief: A former caretaker became a Buddhist because of a talk in a Melbourne public library that never happened. As a Tibetan monk was about to…

    Read full story

    one of our ex-caretakers here a long time ago said he became a Buddhist because an experience he had listening to a talk in Melbourne many many years ago there was a Tibetan Buddhist monk was to give a talk in the public library and so he went along just for interest not really a Buddhist yet and well this Tibetan monk just before he got up to give the talk one of these fundamental Christian people stood up and started to harangue the monk say he was evil a messenger from the devil and Jesus Jesus was the only way and Buddhist being quite gentle said okay you said your stuff Nana please sit down and be quiet we want to listen to the Monk but that just made the Christian fundamentalist even more speaking louder and more aggressively and it took 45-50 minutes to get this guy to leave the auditorium and that's all the time they had for the talk so everyone had to go home and they might never said anything but this young man said that was the most inspiring thing he'd ever seen simply because when this monk was being criticized and put down and scolded and said was evil and part of the devil's crew or whatever the monk was just sitting there peacefully and calm even though he's being scolded he realized that's not what he was

    Open story page·Watch this telling

  • The wobbly VIP chairs and the fist under his nose

    In brief: For the opening of the Nollamara centre the Governor of WA, Sir Gordon Reid, accepts the invitation. Ajahn Brahm orders the best marquee…

    Read full story

    When we first came to this suburb, when we first opened this centre here, it was about twenty years ago now, forget exactly when, maybe twenty three years ago, this hall wasn’t built yet, we had the community hall next door. And we just moved into this new centre, so we had an opening ceremony. And we thought – never know your luck – we invited the then Governor of Western Australia, Sir Gordon Reid. The Reid Highway is named after him. And just to our delight, he accepted. We never thought the Governor would accept to come to a small place like this. But he accepted and he came. We were so thrilled. And even though we were struggling for support, nevertheless, it was going to be a big day. So our treasurer at that time told me: “Look, we wanna make a really good show of it.” My job, my little piece of the action there was to order the marquee and the chairs, the marquee outside and the chairs for our people and our guests. And so, because I was told by the treasurer, it didn’t matter how much it cost, we wanted the very best. I range around for the top hire companies in Perth, I got one in Cottesloe, which hired out the marquees. for Peppermint Grove and Dalkeith And I said: “Look, we going to get the Governor, we really wanted to put a show. Buddhist have come to town, we wanna show we’re here. We don’t want to have a small thing, we want to impress people. So can I have a really nice marquee, and some really good chairs? We’ve got the Governor of the state coming.” And so the lady who took the call said: “Yes,yes, yes, it would cost you..” I said: “It doesn’t matter, the treasurer said, we wanna put on a good show.” Okay, the deal was made. And a Friday afternoon, coz we were going to have the ceremony on a Sunday, so we had to set up on a Friday, before people stop working. The Friday afternoon when the truck came with the marquee and the chairs I was a kind monk, I was helping someone else with their jobs. So I never actually saw them unload. But when I checked, the marquee which they had was absolutely filthy. And all this red dust, they must have had it on some agriculture show. And I was very upset coz I asked for something good. But, you know, instead of complaining, “Rather light a candle than complain about darkness”, we got a hose out, we hosed it down. We had a couple of days for it to dry. And then I saw the chairs, and they were also really dusty. So I had lots of helpers, we got wet clothes, we started cleaning the dust off the chairs. That could be done. But then I saw the ten VIP chairs. And this is no exaggeration: of those ten chairs, not one of those chairs had legs the same length… They all wobbled, a lot. And that was just too much. You can wipe down the chairs, you can hose down the tent, but you can’t fix those wobbly chairs. So I ran to the phone, in the room over here, and I managed to catch the Manager the lady I talked to, as she was closing the office late on Friday afternoon. And I said: “Look, this is what you’ve delivered. Don’t you remember I asked for the best? We’ve got the Governor of Western Australia and his wife coming. We can’t have them falling over, because the chairs have got legs with not equal sizes.” The lady was very apologetic. She said: “Look, there must be some sort of mistake. I’ll get them changed immediately.” Thank you. But what happened was this. The men had already knocked off for the weekend. They were down at the pub, starting their evening drinking when the manager came in and said: “The Buddhists need some new chairs. Get back to work!” So you can imagine how they felt. But this time I was waiting for them just in front of the building here. And as that truck turned the corner, it came half way down Nanson Way, you know what I’m talking about just from Constance Street to this, what is about – about 200 metres, halfway, a man jumped out of the truck. it must have been going about 20-30 km/h. He jumped up and came running towards us, with his fist clenched “Where is the bloke in charge?? I want the bloke in charge!!” So I went up to him and said: “I’m the bloke in charge.” And his eyes were red, just like the monster’s in the Jakata Tales of Buddhist. And you could smell just on his breath how much beer was he been drinking. And I sniffed it in. That’s the most beer I’ve ever imbibed in 34 years as a monk, (laughter) coming from his breath. And his fist was right in front of my nose, like this. And everybody stopped what they were doing, they stopped all the work and they just looked. Not one of them came to help me. (laughter) Thanks a lot! But they didn’t need to. It’s amazing, when you are a meditator, when you know what to do, it’s so easy not to be violent. All I did was just make my mind really peaceful, not at all afraid or scared, and I just looked him in the eye peacefully, kindly. That was one of the most amazing experiences in my life as a monk. He had his first this far from my nose, breathing all this alcohol into me, red eyes. But he could go no further. Because I wasn’t reacting in the normal way, his brain basically fused. It did, he did not know what to do next. And it’s one of those moments when you had him, you had him completely in your control and power. He couldn’t go backwards, he couldn’t go forwards. It’s a wonderful experience, holding a person like that -just because you were peaceful and you were kind. And he was completely confused. Now, in that three or four minutes when I held him there - it wasn’t just a couple of seconds, it was quite a long time – the truck had parked, and one of the other, probably the boss of the gang, came out, walked towards us and put his hand on this guy’s shoulder and said: “Come on, let’s unload the chairs.” And I said: “Yes, I’ll help you.” And we unloaded those chairs together.

    Open story page·Watch this telling

All stories·Find a story for your situation