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CHAPTER SEVEN exert yourself for food at meal-time? Thus effort as well as Fate, is a good thing for accomplishing one's object. Effort is superior to Fate for accomplishing one's object. For instance, water falls from the sky. It would come also from digging up the ground. Fate is very strong, indeed. Effort is stronger even than Fate.”
Thus the great muni defeated Gośāla and he was praised by Khecaras and others giving a cheer of victory.
Then the sage Ārdraka went to the hermitage of ascetics who live from killing elephants, 172 a hut filled with elephantmeat thrown into the sun for drying. The ascetics living there killed one very large elephant and lived many days, eating its meat. They said: “It is better for one elephant to be killed on whose meat alone much time is spent. What is the use of many deer, partridges, fish, et cetera ?” With them the purpose—namely food-predominated over the sin in it.
At that time the ascetics, devoted to a religion with a show of compassion, tied up a large elephant for slaughter. The sage, his mind tender with compassion, went by the road where the elephant was tied with a lot of chains. The elephant saw the sage, surrounded by five hundred munis, being honored by the people whose heads were touching the ground.
The elephant, whose karma was light, saw the muni and thought: “Suppose I also pay homage to him. Can I do that, chained?” At the sight of the sage, the iron chains fell apart just like serpent-nooses at the sight of Garuda. The elephant, unimpeded, touched the muni to pay homage to him and the people said, “The muni is killed ! He is killed !” The people fled, but the muni stood just as he was. The elephant bowed to him, his forehead bowed. When the elephant had touched his feet repeatedly with his extended trunk, like one injured by a forest-fire touching the plantain
172 330. Hastitāpasa. A Buddhist sect of monks who lived on elephant. meat, PH.
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