I’d like to share the story behind this moment of exquisite connection when I meditated recently with the small herd of orphaned elephants at Wild is Life in Zimbabwe.
Elephants find themselves orphaned in only the most tragic of circumstances. In Zimbabwe, Roxy Danckwerts established an elephant nursery to provide all the nurture and love these traumatised beings need to survive their ordeal, to belong to a new family among an orphan herd, and ultimately to find sanctuary in a vast release site where many elephants roam freely.
Among the many special qualities of elephants is the way they respond intuitively to those with whom they come into contact. In particular, how they reflect our state of mind. For example, the small herd at Wild is Life became agitated and edgy when a visitor came to observe them in a state of nervous excitement. On a different occasion, every single one of them turned their backs on a group of visitors, sitting only a short distance away, a number of whom were far more interested in their phones than in the elephants – yes, extraordinary but true!
When I was granted the special privilege of being able to sit quietly in meditation with the herd one morning, I thought I’d try an experiment: I would practice two different types of meditation and see how the elies responded in each case.
I began the session, as Tibetan Buddhists do, by going for refuge and recollecting the motivation of bodhichitta. Then I tried as best I could to settle into a state of open, peaceful consciousness, as described in my recent blog about how, exactly, to access our inner riches.
I had the strongest sense of shared serenity with the elephants, not that I was consciously focusing on them, but rather on a peaceful state free from thought, including any conception of self or other. While trying to retain this focus, I was aware of some of the younger elies coming to scan me with their trunks, as they do, in some cases sucking my foot. Being ticklish, this was one of the most hilarious distractions I’ve had to deal with as a meditator! Perhaps they were trying to get me to lighten up – or say, “In fact, it really is all about me!”
All the while I was engaged in this samatha or pacifying meditation, I was also aware of the largest male elephant, Kura, standing behind the others, quietly observing things from a distance.
For the second part of the session, I chanted, out loud, the mantra of Green Tara the Buddha of compassion-in-action. Om tare tuttare ture soha is a mantra I usually say in the presence of animals, having found that they can sometimes respond to it very quickly. Back in Australia, for example, when I chant it to the galahs – pink and grey parrots – who visit, they may pause with drowsy eyes and seem to go into a trance-like state occasionally for periods of quite a few seconds.
As soon as I started reciting this mantra with the elephants, Kura was on the move, his majestic, tusked form approaching me, closer and closer, until he was right beside the rock where I was sitting, reaching out to me first with his trunk, then shoving his whole head on the granite boulder.
It was a moment of the most extraordinary connection. There was a very real sense that Kura was responding to Tara, whose presence was the focus of my heartfelt invocation.
When we say the mantra of a Buddha, it is understood that that Buddha is immediately present. In particular, it is the practice of Green Tara, the mother of all Buddhas and the embodiment of compassion-in-action, to move swiftly to the aid of any being who is suffering, and to relieve whatever pain they may be experiencing.
That day, I had the strongest sense of Kura being powerfully drawn by Tara’s presence, that he came towards me at that time because he wanted to be physically closer, to bathe in the energy, to drink it in. During those timeless moments of connection, the very long lashes of his eyelids were half-closed as I rested my hand on the smooth, grey expanse of his mighty forehead.
But at the same time too, in the most uplifting and extraordinary way, there was no meditator, no elephant, and no act of meditation. In that boundless spaciousness, there was only the presence of compassion and the wellspring of love from which it flows.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.
Rumi
If you are interested in exploring the presence of Green Tara for yourself, this is one of my favourite images of her:
Om tare tuttare ture soha
Om tare tuttare ture soha
Om tare tuttare ture soha
My precious Vajra Acharya, Zasep Tulku Rinpoche, explains the practice of Green Tara here.
This beautiful moment would never have happened without the generous support of Roxy Danckwerts, founder of Wild is Life/Zimbabwe Elephant Nursery, Cath Jennings, who took me out to be with the elephants on several occasions, and their wonderful team of elephant carers.
Nor, of course, could it have happened without the teachings I have received on Tara practice especially from my kind and precious teachers Zasep Tulku Rinpoche and Les Sheehy.
There are no words to convey my heartfelt thanks.
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