Reading guide
A recognized image, this project's own first encounter
This project's own reading: this simile is among the canon's own most widely recognized single images, traditionally cited to illustrate the rarity of human rebirth and, by extension, the rarity of any opportunity to encounter the Dhamma at all — here presented in its own more modest, ocean-scale form, with SN 56.48 escalating it further.
The stated reason: no possibility of ethical conduct
This project's own reading: the discourse's own explanation for the underworld's own severity is not merely suffering's own intensity, but the total absence of any principled or moral conduct there — beings there simply prey on each other, preying especially on the weak, with no possibility of the good and skillful action that might otherwise lead upward.
Key terms
The text
§1“Mendicants, suppose a person were to throw a yoke with a single hole into the ocean. And there was a one-eyed turtle who popped up once every hundred years. What do you think, mendicants? Would that one-eyed turtle, popping up once every hundred years, still poke its neck through the hole in that yoke?” “Only after a very long time, sir, if ever.”
§2“That one-eyed turtle might poke its neck through the hole in that yoke, but in any case it’d be sooner than a fool fallen to the underworld is reborn as a human being, I say.
§3Why is that? Because in that place there’s no principled or moral conduct, and no doing what is good and skillful. There they just prey on each other, preying on the weak. Why is that? It’s because they haven’t seen the four noble truths. What four? The noble truths of suffering, its origin, its cessation, and the path.
§4That’s why you should practice meditation …”
Self-check quiz
3 questions. Click an answer to see immediate feedback. No score is recorded — this is for your own checking.