On Finding Beauty in the Death of Eleven Elephants
October 2019 — eleven elephants drowned at the base of a waterfall in Khao Yai National Park, Thailand. A baby elephant had fallen into the water, causing members of the herd to try and help, they also fell. Rangers at the national park reported finding eleven dead elephants, and two surviving. An absolute tragedy.
I saw the title link on the Washington post — Dead Elephants. Hovering over the link my imagination span through scenarios: hunters, environmental tragedy, poisoning, disaster at a zoo, train crash involving a traveling circus. I did not expect the report to contain such a volume of dead, nor did I expect it to tell a story of such beauty.
I recognize that referring to the death of eleven elephants, as they attempted to save a calf and each other, as beautiful comes across as macabre. I would accept criticism that I am being trite, also that I am being insensitive. I ran through those feelings myself while sitting in meditation over the weight of the report.
- A caveat: I am not attempting to anthropomorphize the elephants, nor will I attempt to claim that the death of eleven elephants is akin to the death of school children during a shooting, or addicts from oxycodone overdose, or migrant children left without appropriate medical care. I am writing about how this singular report moved me, and that motion itself is part of a greater work, undertaken through my own practice of meditation and psychotherapy. I am also not dismissing the value of animal life.
While reading the article I closed it, twice. Pressing the back-button I chided myself ‘you do not need to read any more tragedy, you are aware of enough already’ / ‘the volume and breadth of suffering is too much, do not look further into this’. My ego is good at making me feel accomplished, at making me feel accepting of indifference. It is easy to find reasons to look away.
The first time I returned to the page I was driven by a curiosity: ‘what would be done about such a horror’ — I left the page again, realizing that whatever was to be done had nothing to do with me, nor would that knowledge affect or effect my life in any real or tangible sense… unless I wanted to make up a story for myself, and make myself feel important.
The second time I returned to the page I was drawn by something else, a feeling that I needed to look at it, to witness the reality of the event, even though it had passed.
My first rationale regarding my lacking a place in the narrative was correct, but I did not want to rubberneck the spectacle, if anything my initial click-out from the page would have ordinarily moved me toward seeking alternative content elsewhere, to reset. However, I felt moved to witness the reality of their death because it stood out as key to something that had been puzzling me for quite some time.
Some months earlier I had watched a nature show, during which a male lion had become separated from the pride. Attempting to rejoin his fellow-lions he had been set-upon by a pack of hyenas, outnumbered and weary he valiantly attempted to ward them off. They pressed on. The lion began to succumb to the hyenas, and as I watched I was filled with defensive anger, fantasies running through my mind of the lion exercising one last burst of energy and seeing the hyenas off. I could not bear to see him defeated and consumed by these awful opportunists. Suddenly, as all seemed lost, another male lion ran in to rescue him. A cousin who happened upon the scene, and both lions took upon the hyenas.
I was filled with joy and a rising feeling of justice. I thought proudly to myself “Fuck those fuckers up”. Fantasies filled my mind of how I too might run in to rescue someone, and together we might unleash fury upon them. All of a sudden, the rescuing lion grabbed a hyena by the hip and bit down, shaking the hyena. The hyena let out a scream as it was thrown down to the floor, and slunk away off camera, dragging itself by two legs. I burst into tears, filled with fear for the hyena, horrified at the violence, and deeply troubled by thoughts of the hyena laying in pain, slowly dying from the wounds.
I return to that scene over and over in my mind, I am unable to find comfort or reprieve from the mechanism of suffering inherent in that scenario. The hyena is an asshole, ganging up on the lion, taking advantage of it being separated and alone. The guy is a real asshole, but he is no different from the lion, an opportunist hunter himself.
Now I fully understand that male lions are the pinnacle of patriarchy within the animal kingdom, lazing under a tree while the female lions hunt. He is the proverbial fat-cat. Yet by association alone he is a predatory asshole, same as the hyena. They both survive through benefiting from the weakness and suffering of others.
Yes, I remember, I said that I wasn’t going to anthropomorphize the elephants, and I will not do so with the lions either, nor the hyena. I know how the food-chain works, I fully accept their nature — but this is about me, not them. The feelings are mine.
27 years ago, I stopped eating meat — I did so because I was struck by my own desire to experience comfort, to feel safe, and juxtaposing that against my carnivorousness I felt moved to withdraw from the food-chain. I had grown up hunting, I had killed many animals, some with my hands, and that implicit knowledge gave way to something rising in me, causing a profound change. If I desired compassion for self, I should extend compassion to others. So, it is common that when watching a nature show I wince in remembrance of my own actions. I am often brought to tears during these times.
The puzzle that I mentioned earlier centered around my own personal therapeutic work — I often feel shipwrecked in this life, somehow out of place and disturbed. You know when a sound is just audible but unusual and out of place? It is like that. As if I can hear a stirring somewhere, a restlessness that cannot find respite. Sometimes this feeling can bring me to despair, as if something is profoundly wrong. The thing is I am not wrong. There is a vast disturbance present, there always has been. Some religions refer to this as sin, some as karma, others as fate. Philosophies speak of malaise, while some posit a Machiavellian scenario — Plato’s cave springs to mind.
The puzzle I ruminate upon is my inability to accept the nature of this place as the inherent nature of this place. Part ego, part fear, part empathy, part anxiety, part conditioned responsibility — I move through rationale and reason that always lands me at the feet of existential angst. Luckily for me I am an existential shrink — so I live and commune in this space. I find a resolution but not resolve.
The puzzle, for me, is: how do I manage to resolve my own existence when understanding the nature of this place… when the nature of this place causes such suffering? I do not wish to suffer, I do not wish others to suffer… I am churning in chaos.
I have come to find a resolution in sitting with compassion for lion and hyena alike, radically accepting their nature. I would sit and meditate on the primary drives within each animal and surrender to the mechanics of the universe. This is good, it is really good — in the sense that it is rational and certainly stops me from losing nuts and bolts over a couple of assholes on the Serengeti. Still, I am void of resolve in this matter. Romanticism aside I accept materialism, and I acknowledge how I am both cultured and wired toward survival as much as I am toward any form of altruism.
The elephants though — they did it to themselves. One by one they waded, plunged or staggered into the deadly water. If I had been there in person to witness it, I feel that I too would have drowned. I would have made some attempt at a rescue, but I also feel I would have become deranged by the utter horror of it all — flinging myself into the churning water like some kind Romeo, or Juliette. Those idiots. Those idiots.
I have placed myself in danger, in an attempt to save others multiple times: I ran into the road to grab a child out from in front of a car; I waded into a midnight flash-flood, lightning storm and all, to a couple trapped in their car; swam into a rip-current on my surfboard to save a father and son; threw myself from my bicycle to stop a baby-stroller plummeting down a hill.
In all of those situations I acted out of instinct, we tend to believe that such instincts are deeply conditioned, the consequence of well-nurtured socialization. I believe those traits are inherent, that they activate in the right circumstances. I believe those circumstances offer an opportunity of insight into the nature of compassion.
The elephants acted out instinct, the same instinct that caused my own action — I closed my eyes in the middle of reading the article about the elephants, the image of their lifeless bodies floating in the river present in my mind, and I meditated upon their death. As tears rolled down my cheeks something else rose within me, a deep and profound feeling of gratitude, a knowing resonance with the actions that caused their death, and a humbling awareness that without such instincts we are all lost. Without such action, we are all lost.
I moved further and further into the beauty of their death, that we are not lost, it was not futile because they had died — it was beautiful that they had tried. Without such beauty, we are all lost.
As I sat in meditation I was softly visited by images: of the lion rushing in to save his cousin; of a hyena tending to its young came next; the elephants driven to panic and action arose; I revisited the look in the eyes of a wounded bird in the grass as I approached it; I remembered being cared for by others as a child; the recalled inevitable fate of wounded mouse I had rescued from a cat; I thought of the children I had cared for; I pictured the surviving elephants, raising a new family; I saw my own life pulsing out into eternity; I saw all life, for all time, as light.
All beings living and dying, all beings finding solace.
Tears falling and breath being drawn into my lungs.
The beauty of it all.
The beauty of it all.
