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A story I once read about Buddha comes to mind. It illustrates how much reality can be distorted when we make decisions based solely on the information available to us. The information we possess may be incomplete or even incorrect.
The story goes as follows:
A ruler orders a group of blind yogi masters to touch an elephant and describewhat tey think it is like, how it looks and what can be known about it. One touches the ear, another the leg, and another the trunk. When asked for their opinions, each gives a completely different description of the elephant. They firmly beleive that their perception is accurate and that the others are mistaken. In reality, each of them only experienced a part of the whole, not the complete picture.
When facing with a new situation, it’s important to examine it thoroughly and explore all aspects. We must have personal experience before forming opinions on a subject. Rushing to conclusions without firsthand experience may not lead to accurate understanding. Information can come from many sources – conversations, books, articles, or films. However, we likely won’t see the entire picture because we selectively choose which director’s films we watch, which author’s books we read, and whose opinion from our surroundings to trust. Based on this filtered input, we develop our own unique perspective.
Life is like a puzzle, with each piece needing to be put in place to form a bigger picture.
However, it’s possible we may never see the complete picture because there’s always another piece waiting to be discovered. If we had all the information, how could we continue to grow? Fortunately, there will always be someone who senses or knows that there’s still something unexplored in the unknown – something waiting to be discovered. We must keep going, uncovering new pieces of the puzzle.
The story about the elephant can be found in the book Satipatthāna – The Direct Path to Realization
