The Trickster Elegba
Elegba, also called Èshù, is a Yoruban trickster deity. He mediates between the heaven and earth, has dominion over the crossroads, and, though he creates mischief, he does so in the service of harmony. Elegba teaches us that there are two sides to every question. [1]
In their book of stories, Nina Jaffe and Steve Zeitlin retell a story about Elegba.
Once upon a time, there lived two farmers, Olufemi and Olushegun. They lived next to one another and were great friends. Every day they talked, and they always agreed. If they were deciding how to harvest their crops or how to discipline their children, they agreed. On matters of faith, relationships, and work, they agreed. They vowed they would never fight.
Looking down upon them, the god Elegba saw how happy they were and was pleased enough. He knew, however, that life is not always so simple, and the best friendships must be tested by difficulty. So Elegba decided to test them.
One market day, he dressed up in a bright, many-colored coat, and placed a tall hat on his head. On one side, the hat was red; on the other, it was black. He decorated it with cowry shells that jingled when he walked.
Knowing that the two farmers would be selling their wares at market, one on each side of the busy road, Elegba strode down the street toward them. As he got near, he started to dance a bit, making his cowry shells sing. In this way he attracted attention, and Olufemi and Olushegun stared at him as he passed.
A Friendship Tested
“Did you see that man?” Olufemi yelled to his friend who stood on the other side of the street.
“What a great outfit he had,” Olushegun shouted back. “But what a strange, black hat he had.”
“Black hat?” Olufemi called back. “We must be thinking of two different fellows. This man’s hat was red.”
Thus the two began to argue. Olushegun was certain the hat was black, and Olufemi knew just as certainly that it was red, and so it went. They ran out from behind their stalls and met in the center of the street, shouting at each other.
“Black!” “Red!” “Black!” “Red!”
They even started shoving one another, they were so mad.
A crowd gathered, trying to calm the the two men down or pull them apart, but nothing. The two friends just got more and more incensed.
Then, someone could be heard singing, and the singing got closer and closer until finally, an old man wearing a tall hat and a many-colored robe pushed his way forward and stepped between the two friends. Amazed, Olufemi and Olushegun stopped and stared.
“You two friends,” the man said, “have for so long lived in in peace, and now you are willing to destroy your friendship over a silly disagreement. Well, look at this before you do.”
And the man began to spin, round and round, and his red hat turned to black and turned to red. Faster and faster the man spun, until the colors became a whirl, and then the man was gone.
Seeing the Other Side
“What fools we have been,” the two friends cried. They embraced one another and laughed.
“I saw my side,” said Olufemi, “and I thought it was the only side.”
“I did the same thing,” Olushegun told his friend. “Never did I imagine there could be another side but mine.”
“Now we know,” Olufemi said, “always to look at both sides before we decide anything.”
On their way home that evening, they stopped at the shrine of Elegba to leave an offering, grateful to the god of mischief who showed them how to get past their disagreement and become friends once again. [2]
Looking at Other Sides
This story shows us that we do not always see the whole picture. We do not always know everything we must know to make a decision or a judgment.
For instance, before we condemn the beggar for being lazy, we need to understand her history, her burdens, her barriers to freedom. Can we see the world from her side, or only our own? Might we not be in the same situation if we had lived a similar life? Can we not feel compassion instead of censure?
In religious, political, and relational realms, it helps to be able to step back and realize that, often, the hat is both red and black. We see it only from one side.
At the same time, the hat is not yellow. There are truths, and there are lies. To cease from judging does not mean we must refrain from recognizing the difference. It doesn’t mean we don’t know the difference between kindness and cruelty or compassion and evil. If we can see the other side, we might realize that kindness does not always mean niceness, and compassion can cause us to protect our loved ones with fierceness. Yet we sense that right and wrong exist.
In that Field Beyond
In his poem, “A Great Wagon,” Rumi may have said that he would meet us in that field beyond “wrongdoing and rightdoing,” but that doesn’t mean anything we do is acceptable.
Derek Beres talks about a “dark side” to meditation. He cited a study by the psychologist June P. Tangney that examined what happens to prisoners who practice mindfulness meditation. The researchers discovered that those who focused on recognizing and modulating their emotions were less likely to engage in criminal thinking or behavior. When prisoners focused on nonjudgment, however, they became more comfortable with their criminality. [3]
Nonjudgment is important for people who suffer from anxiety or depression, who feel unworthy or are plagued by guilt, but not so much for those who tend toward narcissism, impulsivity, and antisocial behaviors.
In Rumi’s poem, this field is a place of the spirit. There, ego has no sway. We can find that place in our hearts and in a connection with the holy. It is a blissful place of nirvana, a place of contentment and equanimity.
At the same time, we do not find this place in the world. To assume that right or wrong have no meaning in our homes and our nations is to confuse nonjudgment with license.

No Thing
In Buddhism, there is the concept of no thing. Enlightenment shows us that this world is an illusion. We are an illusion. There is no this or that, no suchness, no I or Thou, no distinction or separation.
All true. Sometimes, though, we confuse this truth with the idea that nothing matters. After all, if everything is one, if there is no distinction between you and me, then what I do to you, I also do to myself. So if I harm you, I am harming me.
At the same time, since my ego is an illusion, the pain I am feeling is also an illusion. Therefore, it doesn’t really matter, does it?
This is a misunderstanding of the concept. Emptiness or egolessnesss does not mean human beings—and animals and trees and clouds—don’t exist. We are not just illusory. The Buddhist psychologist Mark Epstein quotes fellow psychologist Jack Engler who states, “Ontological emptiness does not mean psychological emptiness.” [4] We might not have a self that endures, certainly not one that endures in the same form from one moment to the next, but we do have a self that exists in time, is alive and whole in this second. Our task, Epstein explains, is not just to bring mindfulness to bear on our impermanence, but to use it also to discover our self, that being buried beneath our defensive projections.
Right and Wrong
Within the bodies we carry around with us, a self exists. Our self has longings and dreams, needs and desires, abilities and responsibilities. This is what we discover when we experience our emptiness. We don’t find that there is nothing there. Instead, we find that, though the self that has formed within us is not real in the spiritual sense, it nonetheless has substance. Within us all lives a self that has purpose and drive. We have a sacred essence.
Not everything we do aligns with that essence. As a sacred self, we have a responsibility to behave in accordance with sacred values. For instance, in Buddhism, there is the eightfold path that includes “right” thinking and doing. Mindfulness and nonjudgment are important tools, but they’d don’t encourage lawlessness. They don’t encourage us to cave into our childish lusts and cravings. Instead, they invite discrimination.
Obviously, this is not the kind of discrimination that labels and condemns. This discrimination helps us decide when something is loving and when it is hateful. This discrimination asserts that some actions are right and some wrong, not because we judge the individual doing the action so much as we believe in an essential code of conduct, that how we treat one another does matter.
For instance, in Buddhism, there is the eightfold path that teaches us to act with skillfulness and mindfulness. Rumi wrote of love, of union with the divine. This was the goal, to become one with the sacred. That implies that not everything is equally right, for not everything is equally loving or bonding. Rumi teaches us that by seeking the wisdom of the Beloved, we discover the path to freedom, and freedom is a thing to be desired.
God Rejoices
Months ago, I talked about a dream in which I saw God laugh with delight as we humans slaughtered one another. It was not so much that this slaughtering was right and good in God’s eyes. No. It was that God saw within our violence a vitality and passion that so fully expressed our humanness, God rejoiced. In that moment, there was but the fullness of being, and that has its own kind of joy.
This dream did not mean, however, that God wants us to destroy each other, nor would God encourage us to ignore suffering. If God wants anything from us, it is for us to live in love, to embrace peace, to promote justice. The thing is, it can be hard to understand what love looks like when it’s not sweet and gentle. Sometimes, anger is part of peace. Occasionally, justice looks like retribution, while at other times, it’s more like mercy or forgiveness. How do we know?
The Nazis murder millions of Jews. Was war against them wrong? Now, the Taliban is taking over in Afghanistan. Should they be allowed to spread their violence and cruelty without restraint? Are we so relativistic that we dare not judge one thing right and another wrong? Do the Nazis and the Taliban simply see a black hat where we see red? Or do they see a yellow hat that doesn’t even exist?
Nonjudgment
The nonjudgment of mindfulness is not about accepting everything, including evil. It is about loving oneself and others even when we think and feel and behave in ways that cause harm. Through it all, we love. That does not mean we tolerate all things.
Take anger, for instance. Just because we feel angry and can notice our anger and watch it without judging it right or wrong does not mean that acting out of our anger, yelling or hitting or throwing things, is as good and right as containing our emotions. Acceptance is merely the recognition of our humanness. Acceptance reminds us that we are beloved regardless of what we think, feel, and even what we do, yet we still are responsible for how we act. We are responsible for looking deeply at our anger and acknowledging the seeds of pain and fear that lie beneath. We are responsible for noticing the emotion and moving through it so we might let it go.
This is a kind of working through an emotion. That doesn’t mean chastising ourselves for our feelings or demanding that we feel love instead of anger. Our job is not to change what we’re experiencing. Instead, as Epstein tells us, our job is to change our understanding of that emotion. He writes, “To work something through means to change one’s view.” [5]
If we try to push away our emotions, they will cling to us. That’s because when we try to get rid of something, we give it attention, which is a kind of attachment. This is not how we become free. It is not how we change our view.
Changing Our View
We change our view by observing and understanding our emotion. All our emotions come from some seed within ourselves. Yes, there will be an action outside of us that triggers that emotion, but it really comes from memories and postures and hidden thoughts. We make assumptions or see the world clouded by our past. Then angers and fears and lusts arise. If we can understand the seed, our view of the rightness or wrongness of our emotion will change. We will understand it in a new way. Then we will be able to let it go.
This process also helps us see the consequences of our anger, or fear, or hatred, or sadness, or joy. Anger, for instance, gives us information we can us to protect ourselves and our loved ones. So does fear. These emotions have a purpose.
When we act out of our anger and fear, however, we often create situations we don’t like. We might lose friendships, get sick, injure someone we love, harm ourselves. When we act, others will react out of their own painful emotions, and we might not like what they do.
Emotion both serve us and hinder us. Fear keeps us safe and also keeps us enslaved. Love is divine, yet we do stupid things in the name of love, and sometimes we destroy those we love because we cannot bear to let them go. Sadness reminds us of what we value, of what we hold dear. At the same time, it can overwhelm us until we lose the power to act.
Is this right or wrong? How do we judge?
Love and Compassion
It is true that there is no right or wrong, that there is no self. This is even a real truth, not a yellow one. However, is also not black or red, either. It is both, and it is of colors beyond what we can imagine. This truth beyond rightdoing and wrongdoing points to a realm beyond this world, one that is sacred beyond measure, where the Beloved completely loves us all, even the Nazi and the Taliban member and the criminal.
At the same time, before we can come to that field beyond right and wrong, we must understand the values of love and justice, compassion and kindness. To see how we are not a self, we must first know that self. Our egos must be strong before we can release them.
As long as we live in bodies on this earth, however, even if we reach that field, even if we watch our selves dissolve, we need our egos to keep us whole. It is the both-and. In that field beyond rightdoing and wrongdoing, there is no breath. There is not living.
Harmony
Maybe we can visit; maybe can hold that field in our hearts. We live in a different world, however, one where it matters that children cry and people starve and blood fills the streets. This might be illusion, but it’s also real.
All is both real and not real. Because we and our world are real, they matter. How we treat one another matters. In the world we inhabit, evil is not as acceptable as good. Not even Buddhism claims it is. Nor does Elegba. That trickster god understood that acrimony has its place, for it tests us. If we are wise, strife makes us stronger together. Yet acrimony and strife are not the goal. Harmony is.
Elegba wanted the brothers to experience a true and deep friendship, to move beyond their nice, agreeable neighborliness. Not that neighborliness is bad, but Elegba wanted more for them. Our god wants more for us.
Maybe that’s why we sometimes lash out in anger, because we need to face who we are, see our folly, and work through it. We need to change our view.
Elegba didn’t force the brothers to change. He didn’t tell them they were wrong, that they should deny their feelings. Rather, he helped them work through the emotions they felt. He showed them there were two sides.
This doesn’t mean every idea or belief is valid. No matter how hard we pray, we can’t keep a dying loved one from death’s door. No matter how many facts we make up to try and prove ourselves right, the hat is not yellow. Even if we see it that way, that doesn’t make it so. Some people convince themselves the earth is flat, but it’s not.
As If We Were Love
On a spiritual level, facts mean little. Right and wrong mean little. That’s because, on a spiritual level, all is love. Hatred, anger, fear, sadness, acrimony, confusion—they all become love. When the ego dissolves, we can see the true self. When judgment ceases, we see the oneness of all thought and action. Black and red cease to exist as separate entities. Then, we are left with love.
In that spiritual field, it’s not so much that yellow doesn’t exist as that the argument no longer matters. We see all sides, and we see beyond sides.
Our goal, though, is not to live forever in that field. At least, not yet. Our goal is to go there now and then, to touch the grass, to experience a nonjudgment so pure, the distinction between criminal and not criminal is blurred. In that field, we experience the love that erodes all difference. By setting foot there, dipping a toe into nirvana, we can discover a truth so great our view will change forever.
In that place that exists beyond existence, we can open up to love. Then, love will be so much a part of us that when we return home, we can live in our bodies and our world as if that love were still there.
In faith and fondness,
Barbara
Credits
- See “Eshu,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eshu and “Dance Staff for Esu/Elegba,” https://high.org/collections/dance-staff-for-esuelegba/. Also Jaffe, Nina and Steve Zeitlin, The Cow of No Color, New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1998, 77.
- Adapted from Jaffe, Nina and Steve Zeitlin, The Cow of No Color, New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1998, 77-83.
- Beres, Derek, “There’s a Dark Side to Mindfulness Meditation,” Big Think, November 27, 2017, https://bigthink.com/21st-century-spirituality/the-dark-side-of-mindfulness-meditation, accessed 8/14/21.
- Quoted by Epstein, Mark. Psychotherapy Without the Self : A Buddhist Perspective, Yale University Press, 2007, 16. Original: Engler, Jack, ‘‘Being Somebody and Being Nobody: A Reexamination of the Understanding of Self in Psychoanalysis and Buddhism,’’ in Jeremy Safran, ed., Psychoanalysis and Buddhism: An Unfolding Dialogue.
- Epstein, Mark, Psychotherapy Without the Self: A Buddhist Perspective, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007, 155.
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Copyright © 2021 Barbara E. Stevens. All Rights Reserved.