法苑珠林 23.21

23.21

I once heard that there was a young boy who [learned that] the sūtras say that a blind turtle encountering the hole in a floating piece of wood is an exceedingly difficult matter. At that time, this young boy deliberately pierced a board to make a hole that could receive his head, threw it into a pond, entered the pond himself, and bobbed his head up and down wishing to enter the hole. Because the water drifted the board away, he could not encounter it. He immediately reflected to himself, giving rise to extreme revulsion: 'The human body is difficult to obtain. The Buddha used the great sea as an analogy: the hole in the floating wood is small, the blind turtle is sightless and emerges only once every hundred years, making it even more difficult to encounter. Now my pond is small, the hole in the board is large, and I also have two eyes and stick my head out a hundred times a day, yet I still cannot encounter it. How much less could that blind turtle encounter it!' Thereupon he spoke verses: