The King and the Elephant

When another thousand years had passed, Ṛbhu went again to that city to give Nidāgha knowledge. Outside the city he saw Nidāgha standing apart, while the king was entering the city with a great army and retinue. Nidāgha had come from the forest with firewood and kuśa grass, faint with hunger, and he was keeping away from the crowd.

Ṛbhu went up to him, greeted him, and said: Why are you standing apart, brahmin? The king is entering the city, said Nidāgha, and there is a great crowd, so I am standing here. Which of them is the king, said Ṛbhu, and which are the other people? Tell me, best of brahmins; you seem to know.

The one riding that great elephant in rut, tall as a mountain peak, is the king, said Nidāgha. The others are the people around him. You have shown me these two, the elephant and the king, both at once, said Ṛbhu, and you have given me no mark to tell one from the other. Tell me the difference: which is the elephant and which is the king?

The elephant is below, said Nidāgha, and the king is on top of him. Who does not know the relation of the one who carries and the one who is carried? I know it, said Ṛbhu, but make me understand it. What is meant by below, and what by above?

At that Nidāgha jumped up onto Ṛbhu's back and said: Listen, I will tell you what you ask. I am above, like the king, and you are below, like the elephant. I have shown you this example to make you understand. If you are like the king, said Ṛbhu, and I am like the elephant, as you say, then tell me this: which of us is you, and which is I?

At once Nidāgha took hold of his feet and said: Surely you are my teacher, the lord Ṛbhu. No one but my teacher has a mind so steeped in the truth that there is no second. So I know that I have found my teacher. Yes, said Ṛbhu, I am Ṛbhu. Because you served me long ago, and out of a teacher's love, I came to teach you, Nidāgha. What I have taught you in short is the whole heart of the highest truth: that there is no second.

Having said this, the wise teacher Ṛbhu went away. And by that teaching Nidāgha came to rest in that truth. He saw all beings as not different from himself, and, given wholly to Brahman, the one reality behind all things, he reached the highest freedom.