Saṃyutta Nikāya
II. Nidāna Vagga
15. Anamat'agga-Saṃyuttaṃ
I. Paṭhama Vagga
Sutta 10
Eka-Puggala Suttaṃ
This sutta is almost identical with Iti 24.
Person
Translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu.
Sourced from the edition at dhammatalks.org
Provenance, terms and conditons
[1][pts] On one occasion the Blessed One was staying near Rājagaha on Vulture Peak Mountain.
There he addressed the monks, "Monks!"
"Yes, lord," the monks responded to the Blessed One.
The Blessed One said, "Monks, from an inconceivable beginning comes the wandering-on.
A beginning point is not discernible, though beings hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving are transmigrating and wandering on.
If a single person were to transmigrate and wander on for an eon, he/she would leave behind a chain of bones, a pile of bones, a heap of bones, as large as this Mount Vepulla, if there were someone to collect them and the collection were not destroyed.
"Why is that?
From an inconceivable beginning comes the wandering-on.
A beginning point is not discernible, though beings hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving are transmigrating and wandering on.
Long have you thus experienced stress, experienced pain, experienced loss, swelling the cemeteries — enough to become disenchanted with all fabrications, enough to become dispassionate, enough to be released."
That is what the Blessed One said. Having said that, the One Well-gone, the Teacher, said further:
"The accumulation
of a single person's
bones for an eon
would be a heap
on a par with the mountain,
so said the Great Seer.
(He declared this to be
the great Mount Vepulla
to the north of Vulture's Peak
in the mountain-ring
of the Magadhans.)[1]
But when that person sees
with right discernment
the four noble truths —
stress,
the cause of stress,
the transcending of stress,
and the noble eightfold path,
the way to the stilling of stress —
having wandered on
seven times at most, then,
with the ending of all fetters,
he makes an end
of stress."
[1] Magadha was a kingdom in the time of the Buddha, corresponding roughly to the present day state of Bihar. Its capital city, Rājagaha, was surrounded by a ring of five mountains. Vulture's Peak, a secluded rock outcrop in the middle of the ring, was a spot frequented by the Buddha.
