Simile of the Battle Elephant

Q & A
1

Was listening to a discussion between some monks and they kept bring up ‘The Simile of the Battle Elephant’. Is this actual Sutta or is this just a simile that is briefly mentioned as a side note?

When searching for it, all I’ve come up with is the…

Pabbatopama Sutta: The Simile of the Mountains
…mentions battle elephants sorta?, doesn’t seem right though.

Maha-hatthipadopama Sutta: The Great Elephant Footprint Simile
…simile of the Dhamma holding all teaches…

This one mentions battle elephants…
Dharmapada T210 31. The Elephant Simile
doesn’t seem right either.

The context of the conversation was that the mind was like a wild that ones trained/tamed could go into battle and not be moved by the battle going on around it.

2

It’s Anguttara Nikaya 5.139. Practice is likened to a battle.

3

That was quick, thank you very much!

4

The site search has greatly improved recently. If you have given up on it, it’s worth trying again:

https://suttacentral.net/search?query=in:ebs%20elephant

AN5.139 is the 11th result.

If you also add “battle” it’s the second result.

in:ebs elephant AND battle

BTW, MN125 also has a related simile about training an elephant for battle.

5

In the Dhammapada’s Nāgavagga (Dhp. 23) you’ll find eight elephant similes. See in particular the vagga’s opening verse.

6

It occurs actually a number of times. Another good search phrase you may try is “royal bull elephant” which limits the number of results to the more essential ones.

7

Somehow many of the Suttas in the AN seem to be less brilliant than the ones in the first three Nikayas.

In this simile, per example, one could argue that in shying away from the battle, a Buddhist elephant would do exactly what one would expect of him!

Still this Sutta is one of the better examples. But somehow much of the AN to me has a smell of shallow morals and later insertions.