Kisa Gotami and the Mustard Seed

Kisa Gotami was a young woman whose only child died just as he was learning to walk. Deep in denial and blinded by grief, she carried the dead body around the village, begging everyone for medicine to cure her boy. People pitied her or thought her mad.

A wise man directed her to the Buddha. She laid the child at his feet and pleaded, "Lord, do you know a medicine that will cure my boy?"

The Buddha looked at her with boundless compassion and said, "I know of a medicine. Bring me a handful of mustard seeds. But they must come from a house where no one has ever lost a child, a husband, a parent, or a friend to death."

Hopeful, Kisa Gotami went from house to house. At the first house, they gladly offered her mustard seeds. But when she asked if anyone had died there, they replied, "Alas, the living are few, but the dead are many." She moved to the next house, and the next.

Everywhere she went, she found that grief had visited. One had lost a father, another a sister, another a child. She realized that death is the universal law, and that she was not alone in her suffering.

She gently laid her child to rest in the forest and returned to the Buddha, her mind clear. The Buddha said, "You thought you alone had lost a son; the law of death is that there is no permanence among living beings." She became a nun and attained enlightenment.