Dear Venerable,

I am a frequent visitor to your website Simsapa. I am grateful for your guidance on Theravada Buddhism. I need your advice on a question. In a parable, Buddha told the story of the blind sea turtle. "It only rises to sea level once every many years. If there is a wooden platform floating on the sea with a small hole in the middle of it, the chance of the turtle rises and fits its head through that hole is very tiny. And the chance for a soul to become a human is even less than that!". When I told my daughter such advice, she argued that there are more and more people on this earth, overpopulation everywhere, how does that make the chance of reincarnation as human low? Please, kindly advice. I wish you all good health to continue your wonderful task of teaching Dhamma to us all.

A:

Please note that:

- Even when the population of humans on this earth reaches 100 billion, it is still tiny in comparison to the trillions of trillions of all living things on this lowly realm, like those in the microscopic world, not to mention that there are other worlds/realms above and below us. The world human population is measured per km2 while the microbe world is measured in mm2.

- Most humans are born to suffer more than to enjoy. They exist to do bad deeds and suffer the consequences - lacking many necessities like education, health care, travel, information, etc. According to the discourses, there are those with human appearance but exists like hungry ghost, anmals, hell beings. In other words, mmany humans as we know them are only human on the outside but inside they are not really.

- World popultation may look excessive now but that is only temporary. In certain cycles, due to some major internal or external factors, it will suddenly decrease in massive scale. In some periods, only a few million were left on this planet. Meanwhile, the population of the other living things are immeasurable, if they get lessend in one region, they increase elsewhere ...

Best wishes.

TK