Mahilāmukha-Jātaka – The Word as Poison or Medicine
The elephant listens to thieves and becomes a murderer; He listens to the wise men and calms down. The ear is the door to consciousness.
From the Pāli Canon, this Jātaka tells how words can be poison or medicine. The elephant Damsel-face listens to thieves and becomes a killer; listens to sages and calms down. The teaching is universal: the ear is the door of consciousness.
The power of one sentence
There is an ancient story, told twenty-five hundred years ago in a monastery near Rājagaha. The Buddha narrated it to a monk who had listened to the wrong voice. But he was also telling it to us.
It is the story of Damsel-face, a royal elephant of legendary gentleness. Children offered him sugarcane and he took it without touching their hands. He had never killed anything, not even an ant.
Then, one night, some thieves crouched near his stable. They talked among themselves about how to kill without pity, how remorse is a luxury, how the heart must become stone.
The elephant listened.
And learned.
At dawn he killed the first keeper. Then the second. Then the third.
The video: seven scenes, one truth
The seven images of the Mahilāmukha-Jātaka unfold in this video, watch the video, listen to the story, guard your words, someone is learning from you:
00:00-00:07 – Innocence
The elephant on the Ganges shore at dawn, children offering sugarcane, the trunk touching without harming. Original harmony.
00:07-00:14 – The poison
The night of thieves. Thorn-words emerge from their mouths and flow into the elephant's wide-open ear. First exposure to evil.
00:14-00:21 – The fury
Dawn of blood. The trunk wraps around a keeper's body. Others lie on the straw. The elephant does not understand, but his body has learned.
00:21-00:28 – The silence
The sage enters the stable unarmed. He bends, gathers a handful of straw, smoothes it, places it. Leaves without a word.
00:28-00:35 – The healing
The sages sit in a circle, speaking through the night. Golden words flow into the ear. At dawn, the trunk touches the keeper's hand. A tear falls.
00:35-00:42 – The recognition
The Buddha in the bamboo grove. Before him a monk with bowed head. Behind him, the shadow of the elephant. The same wound, the same remedy.
00:42-00:51 – The door
The immense ear, without eyelids. Black thorns and golden petals flow into it. Listening figures surround the scene. One looks toward us.
The lesson
The elephant did not become evil. He simply listened to the wrong voices, and believed they were speaking to him.
Evil, often, is not wickedness. It is only obedience to wrong voices.
One sentence is enough. One alone can carve a tunnel into the heart, night after night, until it collapses. One alone can stitch what seemed torn forever.
The ear has no eyelids. It cannot close. It is always open, always exposed, always ready to receive.
This is why we must guard what enters it.
In our time
We live in an age of verbal overload. Social media, groups, comments, echo chambers: we are constantly exposed to words we did not choose.
The thieves no longer come at night: they speak all day, in our phones. And we listen. And by listening, we become like them.
But the same law applies to good. The words of the wise — those that repeat patience, mercy, forgiveness — can still heal. Can still stitch.
We are never alone when we speak. Someone is always listening.
Someone, right now, is learning from us who to be.
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