Krisha Gotami, a young woman had the fortune to live at the time of the Buddha. When her first born child was about a year old, it fell ill and died. Grief- stricken and clutching its little body, Krisha Gotami roamed the streets, begging everyone she met for a medicine that could restore her child to life. Some ignored her, some laughed at her, and some thought she was mad, but finally she met a wise man who told her that the only person who could perform the miracle she was looking for was the Buddha. So she went to the Buddha, laid the body of her child at His feet and told Him her story. The Buddha listened with infinite compassion. Then he said gently. There is only one way to heal your affliction. Go down to the city and bring me back a mustard seed from any house in which there has never been a death``. Krisha Gotami felt elated and set off at once to the city. She stopped at the first house she saw and said ``I have been told by the Buddha to fetch a mustard seed from a house that has never known death`` ``Many people have died in this house``, she was told. She went on to the next house`` There have been countless deaths in our family``, they said. And so to a third and a fourth house, until she had been all round the city and realized that the Buddha’s condition could not be fulfilled. She took the body of the child to the burial ground and said good bye to him for the last time then returned to the Buddha. ``Did you bring the mustard seed ``, He asked. ``No``, she said, ``I am beginning to understand the lesson you are trying to teach me. Grief made me blind and I thought that only I suffered at the hands of death``. ``Why have you come back? `` asked the Buddha. To ask you to teach me the truth``, she replied ``of what death is, what might lie behind and beyond death, and what in me, if anything will not die``. The Buddha then began to teach her, ``If you were to know the truth of life and death, you must reflect continually on this: There is only one law in this universe that never changes—that all things change and that all things are impermanent. The death of your child has helped you to see now the realm we are in-Samsara is an ocean of unbearable suffering. There is only one way , and only one way, out of samsaras ceaseless round of birth and death, which is the path to liberation. Because pain has now made you to learn and your heart is now opening to the truth, I will show it to you``. Krisha Gotami knelt at His feet and followed the Buddha the rest of her life. Near the end of it, she attained enlightenment.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 17:27:47 +0000
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