Kung Fu and The Parable of the 6 Blind Men and The Elephant

You may be asking what this parable stuff is doing on Kung Fu babble. This ancient tale is actually very relevant to Kung Fu.

Once upon a time, there lived six blind men in a village. One day the villagers told them, “Hey, there is an elephant in the village today.” They had no idea what an elephant was. They decided, “Even though we would not be able to see it, let us go and feel it anyway.” All of them went where the elephant was. Everyone of them touched the elephant.

“Hey, the elephant is 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 belly of the elephant.

“It is like a solid pipe,” Said the sixth man who touched the tusk of the elephant.

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 a different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all those features what you all said.” “Oh!” everyone said. There was no more fight. They felt happy that they were all right.

Poem by John Godfrey Saxe ( 1816–1887)

The story of the Blind Men and the Elephant is found in ancient Jain, Hindu, and Buddhist sources dating all the way back to 500 B.C. The parable is meant to illustrate human fallibility, bias, limited perception, inflexibility and intolerance.

This wisdom allegory applies to any belief, discline, philosophy, religion, culture,etc. where humans will have differing views, perspectives, opinions and will defend them to great extremes. In the poem, each of the blind men is both right and wrong.

Kung Fu is the Elephant. Each part of the Elephant represents a style or method and we are the blind men that stumbled on one part and believe it is the whole Elephant. When we argue and defend our view points, we let our opinions and bias keep us from recognizing the beauty and greatness of the whole. Let us not forget that Kung Fu training is primarily to makes us better human beings. Yet who of us has not seen, heard or participated in arguing about your part of the Elephant?