Puggala sutta: A Single Individual

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:

“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.”

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

“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.

And this is declared to be
as big as Mount Vepulla,
higher than the Vulture’s Peak
in the Mountainfold of the Magadhans.

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.

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