Rohitassa
PersonA deity who, in a former life a sage able to stride across oceans, asked the Buddha whether travel could reach the world’s end free of birth and death, and learned that this end is found only within the body through the path.
A devaputta. He once visited the Buddha at Jetavana and asked if one could, by travelling, reach the end of the world where there would be no birth, old age, death, etc. The Buddha said that such was not possible. The devaputta then confessed that he had, in a previous life, been a sage called Rohitassa, a villager’s son (bhojaputta) of great psychic powers, able in one stride to cross from the western ocean to the eastern. The Commentary (SA.i.92) adds that he would wash in the Anotatta Lake and go to eat in Uttarakuru. With such a stride, he had travelled for one hundred years, and yet failed to reach the world’s end, where there was no birth, old age, death, etc. That was true, agreed the Buddha; in this fathom long body is the world, its origin, its making and end, likewise the practice which leads to such end. S.i.61 f; repeated at A.ii.47 f.
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