Anamataggasaṁyutta 10

Linked Discourses 15.10

Chapter One

A Single Individual

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

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

2 “Mendicants, this transmigration has no known beginning. … One individual 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? This transmigration has no known beginning. … This is quite enough for you to become disillusioned, dispassionate, and freed regarding all conditions.”

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

4 “If the bones of a single individual

for a single eon were gathered up,

they’d make a pile the size of a mountain:

so said the great seer.

5 And this is declared to be

as big as Mount Vepulla,

higher than the Vulture’s Peak

in the Mountainfold of the Magadhans.

6 But then, with right understanding,

one sees the noble truths—

suffering, suffering’s origin,

suffering’s transcendence,

and the noble eightfold path

that leads to the stilling of suffering.

7 After roaming on seven times at most,

that individual

makes an end of suffering,

with the ending of all fetters.”