The First Citta in Life - An end to rebirth.

The Buddha spoke about the dangers of birth in many different ways. He said that birth is dukkha (sorrow); it is followed by old age, sickness and death. He pointed out the foulness of the body and he reminded people that also at this very moment the body is dukkha, impermanent and non-self. If we continue taking mind and body for self there will be no end to the cycle of birth and death.

　

We read in the 'Kindred Sayings' (II, Nidāna-vagga, Ch. XV, par. 10, A

person) that the Buddha, when he was in Rājagaha on Vulture's Peak, said to

the monks: 

 

 Incalculable is the beginning, monks, of this faring on. 

 The earliest point is not revealed of the running on,

faring on of beings, cloaked in ignorance, tied by craving...

The bones of one single person, monks,

running on, faring on for an aeon would be a cairn,

a pile, a heap as great as Mount Vepulla,

were there a collector of those bones 

and the collection were not destroyed.

                

How is this? Incalculable is the beginning, monks, of this faring on.

The earliest point is not revealed of the running on,

faring on of beings, cloaked in ignorance, tied by craving... 

 

Thus spoke the Exalted One.

After the Wellfarer had said this, he spoke further: 

                     

The pile of bones of (all the bodies of) one man 

Who has alone one aeon lived, 

Were heaped a mountain high

- - so said the mighty seer - - 

Yes, reckoned high as Vepulla 

To north of Vulture's Peak, crag-fort of Magadha. 

When he with perfect insight sees The Ariyan Truths: - -

what dukkha is and how it comes. 

And how it may be overpassed, 

 The Ariyan Eightfold Path, the way all ill to abate - - 

 Seven times at most reborn, a man 

Yet running on, through breaking every fetter down, 

Endmaker does become of dukkha. 

 

It is fortunate to be born in the human plane where we can cultivate insight.

When the first stage of enlightenment (the stage of the sotāpanna) has been

attained, the four noble Truths have been realized. Then we will not be

reborn more than seven times and we can be sure that there will eventually

be an end to rebirth.