One-Eyed Turtle and the Floating Log

As Rare As This

There was once a one-eyed turtle living on the bottom of the ocean. The original tale, told by the Buddha to his monks, appears in the Connected Discourses, in a sutra called the Dutiyachiggaḷayugasutta (A Yoke with a Hole or, The Hole, for short), and in some translations, the turtle is blind. A longer, more dramatic version is included in The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, founder of the Nichiren school. My retelling contains elements of both, but does not change the original meaning, which can be summed up as You've No Idea How Lucky You Are to Have Been Born Human so Don't Waste Time.

Suppose, my friends, that the earth was covered entirely with water, and that 1,200,000 miles down, at the very bottom of the ocean, lived a one-eyed turtle that came up to the surface once every hundred years—or once every thousand years, as Nichiren says. Floating in that ocean are a variety of logs, or yokes, that drift east and west in random paths, carried this way and that by the ocean currents. The logs are of many different kinds, but the log that this half-blind turtle is searching for—the only reason she comes up to the surface at all—is made of sandalwood, whose cooling properties help to temper the heat of her burning belly. This, therefore, is her difficult task: to find a log on that fated day before she returns to the deep, in an ocean that is vast, while she is small and half blind. And the log must be made of sandalwood and no other wood, and it must have a hole of just the right size for her to wedge herself in, so she can warm her back in the sun and cool her belly in the ocean. For if the hole is too small, she cannot take refuge there, and the waves will wash her away. If the hole is too big, she'll fall through and sink back to the bottom. It must have "just the right amount" (oryoki) of space. No more, and no less. And she must catch that log as it drifts by from there to here and from here to there, even though she can only half see and is never sure which way debris is floating.

"What do you think, friends?" says the Buddha to his audience, "How rare do you think it is for that one-eyed turtle, popping up once every hundred years, to come upon the perfect log?"

"Very rare," say all the monks. "Very rare indeed."

"Just so," the Buddha said, "It is very rare for you to have been born human, and to have encountered the dharma as taught by a buddha who's appeared in the world. So practice diligently."

The teaching on the preciousness of human birth recurs often in Buddhism, but it's not always easy to remember in the abstract. That's why I love this story. I've returned to it time and again when I'm struggling in some way, and invariably, it comforts me.

I've been adrift in an ocean so vast it threatened to swallow me. And I've also miraculously found my wayward log, and clambering aboard, let myself be drenched with relief and once again, take refuge. Here I am, I tell myself, with this body, this mind. Here I am, with the willingness and the ability to practice. Here I am, in a time and place where this is possible. Therefore, everything is possible. Never forget that.

*Photo by Jeremy Bishop