The Buddhist parable of the blind turtle is actually a metaphor for how long it takes to be reborn as a human after being reborn as a non-human. "Suppose a man

The Buddhist parable of the blind turtle is actually a metaphor for how long it takes to be reborn as a human after being reborn as a non-human. "Suppose a man threw into the ocean a yoke with one hole in it, and then the east wind blew it west and the west wind blew it east and the north wind blew it south and the south wind blew it north; and suppose there were a blind turtle that came up to the surface once at the end of each century. How do you conceive this, bhikkhus, would that blind turtle eventually put his head through that yoke with the one hole in it?" "He might, Lord, at the end of a long period." "Bhikkhus, the blind turtle would sooner put his head through that yoke with a single hole in it than a fool, once gone to a lower realm, would find his way back to the human state." M. 129 [Nanamoli, The Life of the Buddha, p. 250] As the post says, the probability of the turtle surfacing with his head in the yoke on any one try is about 10^-15. Since the turtle tries once per century, the expected length of time as a non-human is 10^17 years, or 10 million times longer than the amount of time since the most recent Big Bang. It's actually kind of cool to visualize this. Let one penny represent the amount of time since the Big Bang (about 10 billion years). Then here's a picture of the amount of pennies representing the expected length of time as a non-human: http://www.kokogiak.com/megapenny/seven.asp http://www.kokogiak.com/megapenny/seven.asp