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THEMES OF SOTERIOLOGICAL REFLECTION
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sea and it is taken in four different directions by the winds blowing from four cardinal directions. There is a blind tortoise there in that sea who comes to the surface once in a hundred years. “What do you think about this, brethern? Could that blind tortoise push his neck through that one hole in the yoke? If at all, Venerable Sir, then only once in a long time. More difficult than that, I say, brethren, is human status once again for the fool who has gone to the hell."87
Mātộceta expresses the simile in the following words : "I, having gained human estate to which belongs the great joy of the Good Law, even as a turtle's neck might chance to thrust through a yoke hole in the mighty ocean, how shall I not extract worth from this voice of mine pervaded as it is with impermanence and beset by dangers arising from the imperfections of karma?"?88 Nāgārjuna has expressed the same idea in the following two verses. Admonishing his royal disciple, King Gautamiputra śātavāhana, he says: "O lord of men, make this (human life) fruitful by practising the Holy Dharma, for it is more difficult to obtain a human birth from animal states than a tortoise to place (its neck) in the aperture of a wooden yoke which are in the same ocean. Having obtained a human birth, one who commits sins is more foolish than one who fills a jewel-adorned golden vessel with vomit.'989
The rarity of birth as a man is taught in the Sūtrasamuccaya, the Gandavyūhasūtra, the Bodhicaryāvatāra and the Sikşāsamuccaya. Sāntideva says that the favourable opportunity is hard to obtain; once obtained, it can lead to the achievement of man's well-being; if it is not utilized, for one's ultimate good now, will this opportunity come again? Birth in human form is one of the eight rarities which are obtained only when eight inauspicious opportunities have been transcended.90 II. xii. DHARMASVĀKHYĀTATVĀNUPREKSĀ
The last of twelve themes of reflection is the well expounded body of religious
87. Majjhimanikāya, vol. III (Nalanda edition), pp. 236-240. Note also the following verse :
"Remember how the parable was told of 'purblind turtle in the Eastern Seas, Or other oceans, once as time goes by, Thrusting his head thro' hole of drifting yoke';
So rare as this chance of human birth." Therigātha, verse 500. Translation by C.A.F. Rhys Davids. 88. Satapancaśatka of Mātrceta, vv. 5-6. Translation by D.R. Shackleton Baily. 89. Suhrllekha, vv. 59-60. Translated from the Tibetan by Lozang Jamspal, Ngawang s. Chophel
and Peter Della Santina, pp. 36-37. 90. See Nagarjuna's Sütrasamuccaya (mDo-kun-las-btus-pa)-I. Translated by Bhikkhu Päsādika in The
Journal of Religious Studies, vol. VII, no. 1 (1979), p. 22: Gan.lavyuhasūtra (Darbhanga edition), p. 90 (durlabho mānuşya pratilabhah); Bolhicaryāvatāra, I. 4 and the commentary pp. 4-5; Siksāsamuccaya (Darbhanga edition) p. 4. The commentary to the Suhrllekha, op. cit., p. 36, gives a list of eighteen opportune conditions which are favourable for religious endeavour culminating in Buddhahood.
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