Rimban Hagio gave the dharma talk at the August 7, 2016 Sunday Service. Part of his talk was expanding on these words in the Three Homages: “Hard it is to be born into human life; now we are living in it. Difficult it is to hear the Teachings of the Blessed One; now we hear them.”
He taped to the lecturn a painting made by Rev. Yuika Hasebe depicting the parable of the blind turtle. The turtle comes up for air every hundred years in an ocean on which floats a log with a hole just the size of the turtle’s head. The log is blown randomly over the surface of the ocean.
What are the odds that the blind turtle happens to surface at exactly the location of the log and oriented so that its head emerges through the hole? Greater than the odds of being born as a human and encountering the dharma.
How fortunate we are!
Photo by David Atcheson