The Seer Of The Deathless Is A Worthy One
The Story of Nun Kisagotami
Chapter 8: The Thousands • Verse 15
The Story of Nun Kisagotami
Chapter 8: The Thousands • Verse 15
Better it is to live one day seeing the Deathless than to live a hundred years without ever seeing the Deathless.
While residing at the Jetavana Monastery, the Buddha spoke this verse with reference to Kisagotami.
Kisagotami was the daughter of a rich man of Savatthi, called Kisagotami because she was slender. She married a rich young man and they had a son, but the boy died when he was just a toddler.
Stricken with grief, Kisagotami carried her dead son about, asking everyone she met for medicine that would bring him back to life, until people began to think she had gone mad.
A wise man who saw her condition wanted to help, and told her that the Buddha had the medicine she sought, and that she should go to him. So she went to the Buddha and asked for medicine to restore her son to life.
The Buddha told her to bring some mustard seeds from a house where no one had ever died.
Carrying her dead child, Kisagotami went from house to house asking for mustard seeds. Everyone was willing to help, but she could not find a single house where death had not come.
She came to realize that hers was not the only family that had faced death, and that the dead were more numerous than the living. With that realization her attachment to her son's body fell away. She left the body in the forest and returned to the Buddha.
When the Buddha asked whether she had found the mustard seed, she said no: in every village, the dead outnumbered the living.
The Buddha told her that she had wrongly imagined she alone had lost a child. Death comes to all beings, sweeping them away like a raging flood before their desires are fulfilled.
Hearing this, Kisagotami fully understood the impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and insubstantiality of the aggregates, and attained the fruit of stream-entry.
Soon afterwards she became a nun. One day, while lighting the lamps, she watched the flames flare up and die down, and clearly perceived the arising and passing away of beings.
The Buddha saw her from his monastery through his supernormal power, sent forth his radiance, and appeared before her. He urged her to keep meditating on the impermanence of all beings and to strive hard to realize Nibbana, and she went on to reach the higher stages of awakening.
The Story of Nun Kisagotami
Chapter 8: The Thousands • Verse 15
Better it is to live one day seeing the Deathless than to live a hundred years without ever seeing the Deathless.
While residing at the Jetavana Monastery, the Buddha spoke this verse with reference to Kisagotami.
Kisagotami was the daughter of a rich man of Savatthi, called Kisagotami because she was slender. She married a rich young man and they had a son, but the boy died when he was just a toddler.
Stricken with grief, Kisagotami carried her dead son about, asking everyone she met for medicine that would bring him back to life, until people began to think she had gone mad.
A wise man who saw her condition wanted to help, and told her that the Buddha had the medicine she sought, and that she should go to him. So she went to the Buddha and asked for medicine to restore her son to life.
The Buddha told her to bring some mustard seeds from a house where no one had ever died.
Carrying her dead child, Kisagotami went from house to house asking for mustard seeds. Everyone was willing to help, but she could not find a single house where death had not come.
She came to realize that hers was not the only family that had faced death, and that the dead were more numerous than the living. With that realization her attachment to her son's body fell away. She left the body in the forest and returned to the Buddha.
When the Buddha asked whether she had found the mustard seed, she said no: in every village, the dead outnumbered the living.
The Buddha told her that she had wrongly imagined she alone had lost a child. Death comes to all beings, sweeping them away like a raging flood before their desires are fulfilled.
Hearing this, Kisagotami fully understood the impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and insubstantiality of the aggregates, and attained the fruit of stream-entry.
Soon afterwards she became a nun. One day, while lighting the lamps, she watched the flames flare up and die down, and clearly perceived the arising and passing away of beings.
The Buddha saw her from his monastery through his supernormal power, sent forth his radiance, and appeared before her. He urged her to keep meditating on the impermanence of all beings and to strive hard to realize Nibbana, and she went on to reach the higher stages of awakening.