Death is Inevitable

Once Gautam Buddha was giving a discourse to his disciples when a woman carrying her infant came to him. She was crying profusely and was in deep pain. She fell at the feet of Buddha and said – 

“My child has died, please bring him back to life. Only you can help me. He was the only thing I had in the world.” 

Buddha asked the woman to calm down and said to her – 

“You cannot bring back anyone dead. It is against the law of nature.”

The woman was unwilling to accept it. She pleaded to Buddha –

“You are an enlightened being and you have the power to revive him. Please help me. I cannot live without my child.”

Buddha felt that it was futile to explain and convince her. So he said to her – 

“Ok, I will help you but for this, you need to do one thing, You need to bring a mustard seed from any house where there has been no death in the family. I will use that to revive your child and bring him back to life.”

The woman hearing this became very happy and agreed to get the seed. She looked very hopeful. 

She ran towards the village and knocked at the door of the first house on her way. The owner of the house was willing to give her the mustard seeds. She asked if there has been any death in their family. The owner replied – 

“I lost my father a couple of months back”. She went to the next house. She asked the lady who opened the door if there had been any death in her family. The Lady replied – “I lost my mother-in-law last week”.

The woman was a bit disappointed but she did not lose hope. She went to another house but there too she got a similar response where the son had died in a war. One after another, she went to every house in the village but she could not find a single house where there had been no death. 

She was exhausted, she came back to Buddha and said – “O, Buddha, I could not find a single house where there has been no death in the family.”

Buddha said to her –

“Death is inevitable. Where there is birth, there is death. It is the law of nature. You have to accept the reality of life.”

She came to realize that there no one in this world who has not lost their loved one. She kept aside her grief and performed the last rites of her child. She renounced the world and became a disciple of Buddha.