經律異相 48.77

48.77

[The Buddha] told the monks: 'Just as in the great ocean there is a blind tortoise with a lifespan of immeasurable kalpas, which surfaces its head once every hundred years; and there is also a piece of floating wood with only a single hole, drifting on the ocean waves, blown east and west with the wind. The blind tortoise surfaces once in a hundred years and might encounter this hole when it reaches the eastern sea, while the floating wood might reach the western sea, revolving contrary to it in this way. Although they may diverge, they might yet meet each other. But for an ordinary worldling drifting in the ocean of the five destinies to regain a human body is far more difficult than this.' (Extracted from the sixteenth fascicle of the Saṃyuktāgama)