Let's go into the Buddhist teachings, somewhere it's explained; imagine the ocean, the Pacific ocean, OK it's huge, it's vast. Imagine there is a sea turtle, which comes up from the bottom once every hundred years. It comes up to get its breath. It goes back down, and it lives for a long time, too. OK, now imagine there is a life-saving ring, you know, one of those things you normally see on boats, that's floating in the Pacific ocean. And it's just floating here, there and everywhere. They say that the chances of this turtle coming up and putting its neck through that ring by random, the chances of that happening are greater than the chance of being born a human. Phew, wow! OK, that's what the books say.
Let's look at it from another direction, let's consider Rebirth is true, and let's consider how many beings are on this earth, let alone whether there's another planet with other living beings as well, let's consider how many beings are on this planet. Right here in this room, how many little critters live here day in and day out? Probably more critters than all the humans in the Wat. How many ants are living just in the area of the Wat, it's seven or so acres of land, how many ants live in this perimeter of the Wat? More ants than people on this island. How many ants live in the whole island? It would be more than the people of Thailand, maybe whole southeast Asia who knows? And that's only ants. So add your mosquitoes, add your flies, add the little other odd creatures and even those borers, that we don't even see, the "baby little" creatures.
How many creatures are on this island? Probably more creatures than there are human beings on the whole planet, six billion right? That's only this island! So, imagine how many beings on this whole planet compared to how many humans. It's like we go walk down to the beach, and consider all the sand on this island, around on the beaches, take a spoon, scoop up a little bit of sand. That's human beings, all the rest of the sand are the other beings on the whole planet.
So this is according to the teachings and also according to what we can see with our own observation, that human beings actually don't number a great deal when you compare them to the other creatures on this planet. When you compare them to all the other creatures on this planet, we're actually very little, very, very, very, very, very little. So when we think of, in the terms of this word, the precious opportunity we have with our life, yeah, it's precious, because we're one of the few beings on this earth who actually have a chance with the Dhamma.
Now let's go further, how fragile is this opportunity? Right? How many years do you get with your life? Because the preciousness of the human life, how fortunate you are, takes more impact the minute you add the second reflection - that death could come at any time. You're not guaranteed you're going to live long. We've had a few students, at least three, maybe four, whom we know have already died. One of their pictures is in the back room, in the office room in there. And she only got a chance to do one retreat with us. OK?
One man had leukemia when he came here, he knew he had a fatal disease, and he was dead within one year. He didn't even get our first newsletter that we sent to him. OK? His parents wrote us back. We just don't know when. This precious opportunity, we don't know how long it is.
Now, regarding Rebirth, let's bring that in again, what's going to happen after this particular life? If Rebirth is true, are you guaranteed to be reborn a human again? Buddhism gives certain minimum requirements. They have basic minimum requirements to be reborn a human. And that is maintaining the Five Precepts. Some of you know them, some of you don't, it's basically to not intentionally kill, not intentionally steal, not intentionally have sexual misconduct, not intentionally use your speech in lying, gossip, deceitful type ways, and not intentionally using any intoxicants that can confuse the mind.
Buddhism says that's a minimum requirement to be reborn a human. Now, whether that's true or not I don't know, but it's pretty clear that there's going to have to be some sort of minimum requirement, if Kamma is logical and all, that we don't get reborn a dog instead. That we have to have done some better work in this life to merit a good Rebirth in the next life. Now basically all of you, in particular, have done something very good in your past lives to get you here.
Just to be able to practice Dhamma! OK, we're talking about human beings being a spoonful of sand, how much of that percentage actually gets the chance to practice the Dhamma?! Pull out the tiniest, tiniest little grain, and it's probably bigger than the percentage that's practicing true Dhamma. OK, it's very, very small. But according to Buddhism, all of you have done something in your past lives which merit you being able to get this life.
There's something called a Dhamma bank account, or we could say Kamma bank account, well, it's like every human being is born with a certain bank account. It's the merit of their past life, kind of stored up. And they've got the benefit of being reborn a human because of that merit and so, of course, that used up part of the bank account, but they have a surplus. Some people have a big surplus, some people have a little. Depending on the situation you got born into, that can indicate to a certain amount how big your Dhamma bank account is.
For me, personally, it was obviously quite big, my parents were pretty good people, I was brought up in a good place, good schooling, etc., I was fairly healthy and so on, all this indicates my Kamma bank account. Now for a lot of human beings, they use up that bank account without putting something back in. Now everyone knows with a normal bank account, if you have got a million dollars in your bank, and you use it up without putting anything more in, eventually it's zero. If you want the bank account to stay solid and support you in your old age, so to speak, you have got to keep putting stuff in. If you want the bank account to support your future birth, so to speak, you have got to make sure that it's pretty big when you die. And that you haven't used it all up.
So this is also part of the opportunity that you have in order to make sure that you have a precious opportunity next lifetime, if this is true. You have got to make sure that you're doing lots of goodness in this life, to make sure that bank account stays as big as it was and hopefully that you actually make it bigger so you get a better Rebirth next life.
We have a precious opportunity now, and as you have heard me say before, try to make the most of it now.