Friends:
Precious yet often wasted is this Human Opportunity!
The Blessed
Gotama
Buddha once explained:
Bhikkhus & friends, imagine a single floating ring drifting
in the great oceans!
Imagine also a blind turtle, which surfaces only once every
hundred years...
What do you think, Bhikkhus, would that blind turtle by
chance often dive
right up under this randomly drifting single ring & insert
its neck in the hole?
If it ever would at all, Sir, it would only happen after an
incredibly long time!
Yet, Bhikkhus & friends, I tell you, that this would happen
sooner, than a fool,
who has fallen into the lower worlds would again regain this
rare human state...
Why so? Because down there exists neither behaviour guided
by the Dhamma,
nor any honesty, nor any morality, nor any good doing or
meritorious activity...
There prevails only this evil: beat or be beaten, eat or be
eaten, cruel merciless
killing and voraciously swallowing up of any weak. Why is it
so primitive there?
Because, Bhikkhus, there nobody have seen these
4 Noble Truths! What four?
All this
is Suffering;
This Greedy Craving
is the
sole Cause of all Suffering;
No
Craving is the
End of Suffering;
The Noble 8-fold Way Ends all Suffering,
Therefore should an effort be made NOW to understand the
4 Noble Truths!
Comment:
Despite the fact that downfall is a common event occurring
at most deaths
(>97%) many beings think that the downfall either not happen
to them (sic!),
or that it does not exist at all... They cannot remember the
last nasty surprise...
Learning anything about cause and effect is thus effectively
disabled!
The very same mistakes are thus repeated, life after life,
almost endlessly!
The Blind Sea-Turtle Simile...
Source (edited extract):
The Grouped Sayings of the Buddha. Samyutta Nikāya.
[V:455-6]
section 56: Saccasamyutta. Thread 47: The Ring and
Blind Turtle ...
Precious & rare is this human chance!
Don't be a Blind Turtle!
Have
a
nice
&
noble
day!
Friendship is the
Greatest!
Bhikkhu Samāhita
_/\_ ]
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