The Related Suttas Collection 15.10

Chapter One

A Single Person

At one time the Buddha was staying near Rājagaha, on the Vulture’s Peak Mountain. There the Buddha addressed the bhikkhus, “Bhikkhus!”

“Venerable sir,” they replied. The Buddha said this:

“Bhikkhus, transmigration has no known beginning. … One person roaming and transmigrating for an eon would amass a heap of bones the size of this Mount Vepulla, if they were gathered together and not lost.

Why is that? Transmigration has no known beginning. … This is quite enough for you to become disillusioned, dispassionate, and freed regarding all conditions.”

That is what the Buddha said. Then the Holy One, the Teacher, went on to say:

“If the bones of a single person for a single eon were gathered up, they’d make a pile the size of a mountain: so said the great seer.

And this is declared to be as huge as Mount Vepulla, higher than the Vulture’s Peak in the Magadhan mountain range.

But then, with right understanding, a person sees the noble truths—suffering, suffering’s origin, suffering’s transcendence, and the noble eightfold path that leads to the stilling of suffering.

After roaming on seven times at most, that person makes an end of suffering, with the ending of all fetters.”