The first story,,  "The Six Blind Men and the Elephant":

There were six blind men in India, who had never seen an elephant, and they wanted to know what an elephant was like. One of them knew the palace elephant keeper and so they went to the palace and the elephant keeper brought out an elephant for them. The postioned themselves around the elephant and each one touched the elephant.

The first blind man was standing next to the elephant's ear, and that blind man felt the ear and then said, "Ahhhh! The elephant is like a fan!"

The second blind man was standing next to the leg, so he felt the leg and said, "What? Are you crazy? The elephant is not like a fan. It is like a tree!"

The third blind man was standing at the elephant's side. He put his hand out and felt the broad expanse and thought, and then said, "No. You're both wrong. The elephant is obviously like a wall"

The fourth blind man was standing at the tail end, and held the tail in his hand. Then he said, " Well, maybe there is something wrong with me,,  but I don't think it is like any of the things that any of you have said. All I can think of is that it is like a rope."

The fifth blind man was at the trunk, and felt that. Then he spoke up and said, "Well,,  you are almost right.  but it is too thick for a rope.  It is like a snake."

The sixth blind man was positioned at a tusk, and he felt the hardness and sharpness. "I tell you it is like a spear. Simple as that."

The elephant keeper came back and led the elephant back while the blind men sat down in the shade of a tree.

They argued, "A snake!" "no! a rope!"  "It is like a wall, I tell you!" "A snake!"  "No!" "Yes!"  "A tree!" "It has to be like a fan, so wide and thin"  "No, because it is so wide it is like a wall!" "Aargghhh!"

The elephant keeper came back, and heard them arguing. He told them, "You are all right from your perspective. But you are all wrong about the elephant in its entirety. Instead of trying to win the argument against the others, you would do better to listen to it all. Then you would have all of the perspectives and understand better the elephant as a whole. Then he explained to them how the fan part was the ear, and the rope part was the tail, and the wall part was the side, and the rest.

The second story,,,  is not exactly a story,, but is something I was taught by an Indian medicine man.

For the Indians, a circle is a sacred shape, and a globe a sacred form for many reasons. Things do try to be round, and when things are away from gravity and in outer space they do get rounded. He looked around where we were to find something that was round, and, not finding anything, he made a fist with his hand.  He held his fist up between him and me, and asked me what I saw.  I told him I saw the back of his hand and knuckles, and some blood vessels on the back of his hand. He told me that is not what he saw.  He saw the heel of his palm, his thumb, and the middle sections of his fingers. We had different perspectives on the same thing, and we were both right in what we saw, and neither of us could see what the other one saw. If there were two more people they would be seeing something still different from their point of view. He said that if I listened to what he described he saw,,, and if he listened to what I described, we would both learn about the whole thing.  He said that if we were both on the same side, and we saw almost the same exact thing, still we would not be seeing the whole thing, only half, and would be missing a lot of it, even though we agreed.  The medicine man's name was Slow Turtle, of the Wampanoags in Massachusetts. He is dead now, but I remember the lesson he taught me.

aho,

amanda