The Elephant and the Crocodile

The sages told the Pandavas of Gajendra, the king of elephants, and of how, in the moment all his great strength failed him, a single cry of surrender to the Lord saved him - the story that has become, for all who hear it, the very picture of helpless souls calling out to God.

Upon a beautiful mountain, in forests thick and green, there lived a mighty bull elephant who was the lord of a great herd. He was enormous and powerful, the strongest of all the elephants, and he roamed his mountain at the head of his herd in pride and contentment, fearing nothing, for there was no creature in those forests that could stand against him. He was called Gajendra, the lord of elephants, and in all his strength and splendor he had never known what it was to be helpless. That was about to change.

One day, in the great heat, Gajendra led his herd down through the forest to a beautiful lake to drink and to bathe and to cool themselves in the water. The lake was clear and lovely, ringed with flowering trees and full of lotuses, and the elephants entered it joyfully, spraying water over themselves, splashing and playing, drinking their fill in the pleasant cool.

Gajendra himself waded out into the deeper water, delighting in it, sporting in the lake at the head of his herd, drawing up water in his great trunk and showering it over his back, entirely at his ease, the lord of all he surveyed, without a care or a fear in the world. He was at the very height of his strength and his contentment, master of his mountain, surrounded by his herd, playing in a beautiful lake on a hot day. He had no idea that beneath the calm surface of that lovely water a death was waiting for him.

In the depths of that lake there lived a huge and powerful crocodile, and as Gajendra sported in the deeper water, the crocodile rose silently and seized the great elephant by the leg in its terrible jaws, locking on with a grip that would not be broken.

Gajendra was astonished and then alarmed, and he pulled with all his enormous strength to free his leg and drag himself back to the shore. But the crocodile held fast and pulled the other way, dragging him deeper into the water. And here, in the water, the contest was not what it would have been on land. For on dry ground the mighty elephant would have crushed the crocodile easily; but in the water the crocodile was in its own element, where its strength was greatest, and the elephant was out of his, where his strength availed him least. The two were locked together, the elephant straining toward the land, the crocodile dragging toward the deep, and the struggle began.

The struggle between the elephant and the crocodile went on, and it did not end quickly. For a very long time - the tale says a thousand years, to show how desperate and prolonged it was - the two great beasts fought, the elephant pulling toward the shore with all his might, the crocodile dragging him back into the deep, neither able to overcome the other, locked in a deadlock of straining strength.

At first the herd of elephants gathered at the water's edge, trumpeting in distress, trying to help their lord. But there was nothing they could do, and as the long struggle wore on and it became clear that Gajendra could not free himself, one by one his herd lost hope and drifted away, until at last even his own family abandoned him to his fate, and he was left alone in the water with the crocodile. All his subjects, all his strength, all his pride could not save him now.

And slowly, across that long and terrible struggle, the mighty Gajendra's strength began to fail. Year by year of the fight the crocodile, in its own element, grew stronger, and the elephant, out of his, grew weaker. The strength he had been so proud of ebbed away, until at last Gajendra knew that he was losing, that his own power was spent, and that by his own strength he could not save himself at all.

It was the failing of his strength that saved Gajendra - for it brought him to the one thing that could save him. As long as he had believed he could free himself by his own power, he had relied upon that power, and it had failed. But now, exhausted, sinking, his great strength gone, abandoned by his herd, with death dragging at his leg, the lord of elephants understood at last that there was no help for him anywhere in himself or in the world.

And in that extremity, stripped of his pride and his strength and every earthly hope, Gajendra turned, for the first time, beyond himself. He understood that only a power greater than all the powers of the world could save him now, and he lifted up his trunk - in which he held a lotus flower, plucked as an offering - and with the last of his strength he cried out to the Lord, the supreme God, the protector of all, calling upon him not with pride but with utter, helpless surrender. "Lord of all," he cried, "refuge of the helpless, you who are the beginning and end of all things - save me! I have no strength of my own left, and no other help. I surrender myself wholly to you. Save me!"

The instant the cry of true surrender left Gajendra - the cry of a soul that has given up all reliance on itself and thrown itself wholly on the mercy of God - the Lord Vishnu heard it, and he came. He did not wait; he did not delay. So swiftly did he come to the aid of his helpless devotee that, it is said, he set out without even pausing to make ready, mounting his great eagle Garuda and rushing through the sky to the lake, drawn by the cry of one who had surrendered everything to him.

The Lord appeared above the lake in his radiant divine form, and Gajendra, sinking, lifted his eyes and his lotus-bearing trunk to him in worship. With his discus, the Sudarshana, the Lord struck off the head of the crocodile and freed the elephant's leg from its jaws, and he drew Gajendra up out of the water, saved at the very edge of death. The long struggle was ended in an instant by the coming of the one power great enough to end it - the power Gajendra had turned to only when every power of his own was spent.

And there was more to the rescue than the saving of an elephant, for the two beings in the struggle were not what they seemed. The crocodile, it was revealed, had been a celestial being - a gandharva - who had been cursed into the body of a crocodile, and by the touch of the Lord's discus he was freed from his curse and restored to his true and shining form, and rose up purified to the higher worlds. So the very death that had seized Gajendra had been, all along, a cursed soul awaiting its own release, and the Lord's coming freed them both at once - the elephant from death, and the crocodile from its curse.

Gajendra himself, by his surrender and his devotion in the moment of his helplessness, was lifted up by the Lord to the highest blessedness; some tellings say the elephant too had been a great soul, even a devoted king, in a former life, working out his own course toward liberation. The Lord blessed Gajendra and granted him a place near himself, and the lord of elephants, who had been at the point of a wretched death, was raised instead to the highest good - all because, when his own strength failed, he had cried out in true surrender to God.

The sages drew the lesson for the Pandavas, and it is one of the most beloved in all the tradition.

"See what saved Gajendra, son of Pandu. It was not his great strength - that failed him utterly, and his pride in it was the very thing that kept him struggling alone for so long. It was not his herd, his family, his subjects - they all abandoned him in the end. What saved him was the moment his own strength was wholly spent, when he gave up every reliance on himself and cried out to the Lord in complete surrender. As long as he trusted in his own power, he sank; the instant he surrendered and called out to God, he was saved at once.

"This is the deepest teaching about the help of God: that it comes most surely not to the proud and self-sufficient, who trust in their own strength, but to the helpless who have nothing left but to throw themselves entirely upon his mercy. When every other support fails, and a soul cries out in true surrender, the Lord comes without delay. So do not despair when your own strength is spent and the world abandons you. That very emptiness may be the doorway through which deliverance comes - if, like Gajendra, you lift up your trunk and cry out, no longer to yourself, but to God."

And the Pandavas, themselves brought low and stripped of their strength and their kingdom, took the cry of the lord of elephants deeply into their hearts.