Friends:
Precious yet quite often wasted is this Dhamma Opportunity!
The Blessed Gotama Buddha once
explained:
Bhikkhus & friends, imagine a single floating ring drifting in the
great oceans!
The Northern, Southern, Western and Eastern winds drive it here
and there...
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 by an
exceedingly rare chance!
Similarly, Bhikkhus it is by an exceedingly rare chance that one
becomes human;
it is by an extraordinarily rare chance that a
Well-Come-&-Gone-One, an Arahat,
a Perfectly Self-Enlightened Buddha arises in this world; and it
is thus also by
an exceptionally rare chance that the Dhamma and Discipline
explained by this
Tathagata shines forth in this world and saves it from Barbarism.
Bhikkhus: You have now gained that precious & rare human state, a
Tathagata,
an Arahat, a Perfectly Self-Enlightened Buddha has arisen in the
world, & the
Dhamma and Discipline proclaimed by the Tathagata shines out in
this world...
Therefore, Bhikkhus & friends, an exertion should be made Now to
understand:
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 effort to fathom these 4 Noble Truths be made
NOW!
Comment:
It is now or never. May a sense of urgency save many from the ruin
of neglect!
Source (edited extract):
The Grouped Sayings of the Buddha. Samyutta Nikaya. [V:456-7]
section 56: Saccasamyutta. Thread 48: The Ring and Blind Turtle 2
...
Precious &
rare is this human state & meeting the Dhamma!
