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Thig 3.4 — Dantika and the Elephant

translated from the Pāli by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Coming out from my day's abiding on Vulture Peak Mountain, I saw on the bank of a river an elephant emerged from its plunge. A man holding a hook requested: "Give me your foot." The elephant extended its foot. The man got up on the elephant. Seeing what was untrained now tamed brought under human control, with that I centered my mind — why I'd gone to the woods in the first place.
Copyright © 1997 Thanissaro Bhikkhu. The text of this page (“Dantika and the Elephant”, by Thanissaro Bhikkhu) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 30 November 2013.