While residing at the Jetavana Monastery, the Buddha spoke this verse with reference to Bahuputtika, a mother of many children.

In Savatthi there lived a couple with seven sons and seven daughters. All the children married, and the family prospered. Then the father died, and the mother kept all the property without giving any of it to the children.

Her sons and daughters wanted their inheritance, and asked her again and again what good the property did them if it stayed idle, and whether they could not make it grow and look after her. Believing they would care for her, she finally divided up the whole estate, keeping nothing for herself.

After a few days, the wife of her eldest son remarked that their 'excellent mother' visited only this house, as though she had given her whole estate to the eldest son.

The wives of her other sons spoke to her in the same way, and so did her daughters, from the eldest to the youngest, whenever she came to their houses.

Treated with such disrespect, she decided she would no longer live with them, and would instead become a nun. She went to the nunnery and was admitted, and after her full ordination she was known as Bahuputtika, 'mother of many children'.

Since she had entered the Sangha in old age, she resolved to be heedful and to spend the whole night in meditation, alongside the major and minor duties of a nun.

On the lower terrace she walked in meditation with her hand on a pillar to guide her steps. Afraid she might strike her head on a tree or something else in the dark, she kept a hand on a tree as she walked, and resolving to follow only the Dhamma taught by the Buddha, she reflected on it and meditated.

The Buddha, seated in his perfumed chamber, sent forth a radiant image of himself and, as if sitting face to face with her, told her that it is better to live just a moment seeing the Dhamma he taught than to live a hundred years without seeing it.