This is a story that I came across many years ago in a time of loss. I found wisdom in its words. 


Kisa Gotami and the mustard seed.

 

A young woman, Kisa Gotami, loses her only child. Overcome with grief, she carries the child’s body from house to house, asking for medicine to bring him back to life.

Someone directs her to Gautama Buddha.

He tells her:

“Bring me a mustard seed from a household that has never known death.”

She goes from door to door. At each house, people are willing to give her a mustard seed,  but when she asks whether the household has been untouched by death, the answer is always no:

a parent has died

a child has died

a spouse has died

Gradually, she realizes:

there is no such house

She returns to the Buddha empty-handed—but with a new understanding. Her grief shifts from something isolating and personal to something shared and universal.