SN 15.10 - SN 15:10 Person | Puggala Sutta
Translated by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu
Source: https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/SN/SN15_10.html
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Copyright: Copyright 2014 Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu, Revised edition 2017
License notice: Copyright 2014 Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu, Revised edition 2017 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Unported. To see a copy of this license visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. “Commercial” shall mean any sale, whether for commercial or non-profit purposes or entities. Questions about this book may be addressed to Metta Forest Monastery Valley Center, CA 92082-1409 U.S.A. Additional resources More Dhamma talks, books and translations by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu are available to download in digital audio and various ebook formats at dhammatalks.org. Printed copy A paperback copy of this book is available free of charge. To request one, write to: Book Request, Metta Forest Monastery, PO Box 1409, Valley Center, CA 92082 USA.
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Person
 Puggala Sutta (SN 15:10)

This sutta is almost identical with Iti 24.

On one occasion the Blessed One was staying near Rājagaha on Vulture Peak Mountain. There he addressed the monks, “Monks!”

“Yes, lord,” the monks responded to the Blessed One.

The Blessed One said, “Monks, from an inconceivable beginning comes the wandering-on. A beginning point is not discernible, though beings hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving are transmigrating & wandering on. If a single person were to transmigrate & wander on for an eon, he/she would leave behind a chain of bones, a pile of bones, a heap of bones, as large as this Mount Vepulla, if there were someone to collect them and the collection were not destroyed.

“Why is that? From an inconceivable beginning comes the wandering-on. A beginning point is not discernible, though beings hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving are transmigrating & wandering on. Long have you thus experienced stress, experienced pain, experienced loss, swelling the cemeteries—enough to become disenchanted with all fabrications, enough to become dispassionate, enough to be released.”

That is what the Blessed One said. Having said that, the One Well-gone, the Teacher, said further:

“The accumulation
of a single person’s
bones for an eon
would be a heap
on a par with the mountain,
so said the Great Seer.
  (He declared this to be
  the great Mount Vepulla
  to the north of Vulture’s Peak
  in the mountain-ring
  of the Magadhans.)1
But when that person sees
with right discernment
the four noble truths—
  stress,
  the cause of stress,
  the transcending of stress,
  & the noble eightfold path,
  the way to the stilling of stress—
having wandered on
seven times at most, then,
  with the ending of all fetters,
      he makes an end
      of stress.”

Note

1. Magadha was a kingdom in the time of the Buddha, corresponding roughly to the present day state of Bihar. Its capital city, Rājagaha, was surrounded by a ring of five mountains. Vulture’s Peak, a secluded rock outcrop in the middle of the ring, was a spot frequented by the Buddha.