What I Learned from an Elephant's Bell
How getting to know the whole story can change the way we see things.
Earlier this year I spent a week in the midwest where I was leading a retreat, and during that time I was invited to join a Centering Prayer group that met at this particular retreat center every Tuesday night. I was delighted to join them, and had a very nice conversation with the nun who coordinated the group. As she and I were chatting, I noticed a most unusual bell sitting on the table where the group had some books on display. The bell was heavy and made of brass, with a large clapper and a series of brass tines extending down from the lip of the bell. It had a clanging but lovely sound, and was unlike any bell I had ever seen before.
It looked like an antique (I later found out that it was probably at least 50-100 years old), and I assumed it was originally from Asia (it turned out to be most likely from India).
Noticing that I was interested in the bell, the coordinator offered it to me as a gift. I demurred, saying I couldn’t accept such a remarkable item, although I was certainly intrigued by it and wondered who made it and where it was from. She encouraged me to take the bell back to my room where I could do a google search on it.
I did, and what I discovered was rather sobering.
The bell was called an “Elephant Claw Bell,” the claw referring to the brass tines below the lip. As the name implies, it was designed to be worn by an elephant, which explains why it was so sturdy and weighty. Plenty of bells like this were offered for sale on eBay and other online retailers, with prices starting about about $40 and going on up from there.
At first, I was surprised it wasn’t worth more. But the more I learned about this particular type of bell, the more I could understand why few people might want one.
Elephant claw bells were designed to be worn by elephants that human trainers were domesticating (or trying to domesticate). The purpose for such a bell was to make sure people could hear when an elephant was nearby.
In other words, elephants were forced to wear bells like this at all times, just to give human beings an extra “warning” to watch out for the large and dangerous creatures. The elephant would have no way to keep from having to listen to the incessant ringing of the bell that a human handler placed on it.
As you can imagine, animal activists in India today work hard to rescue elephants from captivity whenever possible, especially when the elephant has been treated cruelly or is no longer wanted. These “rescue elephants” are taken to sanctuaries where they can be treated for any wounds and cared for in general, and perhaps most important of all, given respite from the suffering they likely experienced in captivity.
What really struck me, however, was learning about just such an elephant, that had been abused, forced into domestic service, and required to wear a claw bell at all times, before finally being cared for in a sanctuary where it could be rehabilitated and treated with kindness.. For an animal like this, upon first being placed in an elephant rescue facility, the bell would actually not be removed from the elephant — not until it was clear that the elephant appeared to be at peace with its new surroundings. The understanding was that these animals had been traumatized by captivity, and even as annoying as it must have been for the elephant to have to listen to the ringing bell all day, to remove the bell too soon from the animal would have been disorienting — and therefore, an additional trauma.
The elephant needed to develop a sense of trust and safety around its rescuers, before they would have been able to remove the bell without upsetting the elephant even further.
As I read up on these practices, I began to see that this bell, which at first I had thought was so interesting and melodic, was actually a symbol of cruelty to animals. Even for someone like me who would never dream of hurting of a elephant, I could never in a clear conscience own (or use) such a bell, because of the cruelty associated with it.
There’s Always More to the Story
As I thought about this, I marveled how something as simple as a large brass bell would have such layers of meaning attached to it. There I was, seriously thinking that a bell like this would have made a beautiful tool for beginning or ending sessions of centering prayer — a paradox: a bell that creates a sound to begin and end a time of contemplative meditation, restful in its quiet. But once I really understood the history behind bells like this, my perspective on it changed radically. A claw bell was used to deny an elephant any ability to simply rest in silence. Yuck.
When I first saw this bell, I didn’t even know what its’ name was, so no wonder that I had no way of knowing what bells like it were used for. In my mind I “categorized” this bell along with singing bowls, hand chimes or tingsha bells — instruments widely used in the meditation community to signal the beginning and end of a session.1
In other words, I thought this unfamiliar bell, while a bit heavy and cumbersome, was yet another tool that could be used to call people into deeper silence. But as soon as I learned the story of what the bell was originally created and used for, it no longer appealed to me: quite the opposite, in fact. I now found it to be disturbing.
It was the same bell. Only my knowledge changed. Only my awareness of what the story was for a bell like this.
It reminds me of how profoundly disorienting and disturbing it is to learn of writers or other public figures, whose work I have admired and benefited from, that are credibly accused of causing harm to others. I’m not sure that I can ever again read the writings of, for example, Jean Vanier, John Howard Yoder, or Sakyong Mipham — at least not without the painful realization that each of these men were documented abusers who victimized women that had come to them for education or spiritual care. Before their abuse became publicly known, I read and found value in each of their writings. Now, I can barely touch one of their books — or even write a paragraph like this — without thinking of the people they hurt.
The 1985 movie Kiss of the Spider Woman, based on a novel by Manuel Puig, treats of similar themes. Set in a South American prison, it tells the story of two cellmates: Molina, a queer man in jail for statutory rape, and Valentin, a political dissident jailed for his revolutionary activities. To deal with the boredom of their confinement, Molina tells elaborate stories based on movies he loves, particularly one that was a Nazi propaganda film. The naive Molina is entranced by the love story in the film, but it takes the politically savvy Valentin to help him see how a film like that was actually harmful to those the Nazis targeted.
Isn’t this part of the human condition: that we never know the full story. How many people idealistically embrace a political party, or a religious organization, only to later be profoundly disillusioned when they learn that the values or philosophy of the movement turn out to be inconsistent with their own sense of what is good or true or honorable? Sometimes this might be because the organization itself is dishonest or duplicitous, but it could even be simply a matter of naive innocence: they simply did not fully understand what the collective truly stood for, at least not at first.
I’m hardly immune to this myself. When I joined the Catholic Church in 2005, I was well aware that the church refused to admit women to the priesthood and continued to dismiss LGBTQ+ persons as sinful and “objectively disordered.” Drawn as I was to Catholic mystical spirituality, I gave the organization the benefit of the doubt, thinking that eventually the pope and the bishops would come around and the Catholic world would catch up to a common sense, mainstream understanding about gender and sexuality. Twenty years later, I am far less optimistic about the institution’s openness or even ability to change, and am much more conscious of how many forces within that institution actually work proactively to limit the rights of women and gay people. Talk about being disillusioned.
As I came to have a clearer understanding of the limits of institutional religion, naturally this impacted my relationship with Christianity-as-organization — even though I continue to be deeply formed by and appreciative of the mystical treasures found within the Catholic tradition, both past and present. I may refuse to read a book by Jean Vanier, but I can’t change how the books of his I’ve already read have helped to shape the person I am today. Perhaps this is why, even though I myself am repelled by authors who caused harm, nevertheless I remain hesitant about “cancel culture” — no person or organization is absolutely evil, so I think we have to be careful about the lengths we go to silence or erase anyone whose work or private life we find objectionable. We should always prioritize those who have been victimized, but pretty much all the great mystical teachers make it clear that reconciliation, not revenge, is the goal toward which we should collectively aspire.
We all make the best choices we can, based on the knowledge available to us at any given time. May we be humble about the reality that more information might help us to see everything in a new, different, and much clearer light — and may we have the courage to act in response to what we truly see.
Nowadays there are also apps like Insight Timer or Calm Wooden Fish that turn our phones into virtual bells, replicating the sounds of different Tibetan singing bowls, including basu, kangsê, dêngzê, sakya zhada, ombu, and shürong. The pro version of Insight Timer also includes recordings of various flutes, chimes, gongs, drums, and wood blocks, all of which you can use as beginner, interval, or ending sounds during a preset sequence you can run when you meditate, so the app will keep track of time (meaning you can simply focus on your meditation).