Friends:
Precious yet quite 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 to 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,
and 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 last
nasty surprise...
Learning anything about cause and effect is thus effectively
disabled!
Source (edited extract):
The Grouped Sayings of the Buddha. Samyutta Nikaya. [V:455-6]
section 56: Saccasamyutta. Thread 47: The Ring and Blind Turtle
...
The Blind
Turtle! Precious & rare is this human chance!
