Golden Ring

The follwoing short story, was the inspiration for this painting series -

A student of Tao asked his master - 'how precious is human life?' The Taoist master replied - 'imagine a golden ring floating on the surface of the ocean, reflecting the sunlight. Now imagine in the depth of the ocean a ten thousand year old water turtle is swimming away. Every one thousand years, it is going up to get a breath of air from the surface of the ocean. If, when it comes up, it manage to put its head through the golden ring, then it transform to have a human life. That is how precious, human life.'