Lessons In Practical Buddhism - Sirimangalo.Org

The teaching itself is all we have left for a teacher; when the
dhamma and the sangha are gone it will be just dark water.
It is like we are on an island, slowly sinking into the ocean.
Once the island is gone, there will be no refuge for beings. It
will be like drowning in an endless ocean with no sign of
shore, floating around and falling prey to the sharks and
crocodiles, tossed about in the storms of the vast dark ocean
of samsara.
For now, we still have this teaching and can put it to
practice. This is something that is very lucky for all of us,
making this an auspicious time.
The second thing we should rejoice in is that not only are we
living in the time of the Buddha’s teaching but we have been
born as human beings. If you had been born a dog, a cat, an
insect, a snake, or a scorpion, it goes without saying that you
could not obtain much benefit from such a life. We may not
know what we did, but we must have done something right.
We were floating around in the ocean of samsara and
somehow we managed to find a way to be born as a human
being.
The Buddha gave a comparison of a sea turtle in regards to
how rare human birth really is. He said, suppose there was a
turtle that lived at the bottom of the ocean that every one
hundred years would come up for air. Then, suppose
someone were to throw a yoke into the great ocean (a yoke
is the bar of wood that they put on the neck of an ox to
harness it to a cart). So, every one hundred years the sea
turtle would come up to the surface, and in the whole of the
ocean there was one yoke floating, tossed about by the four
winds. Well, the Buddha said that it would be more likely for
such a sea turtle, when rising from the bottom of the ocean
every one hundred years, to touch the surface with its neck
in the yoke, than for an ordinary animal to be born a human
being.
As an animal, there is not much one can do to cultivate one’s
mind; it’s mostly kill or be killed. Opportunities to practice
morality, to develop concentration, and obtain wisdom are
very rare. Yet somehow, floating around in the ocean, we
managed to put our neck up inside the yoke. We were born
human beings. I don’t know how we got here. I don’t think
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