20.11 The Story about Kisā Gotamī
Kisāgotamīvatthu
Dhp 287
Burlingame: The Bereaved Mother and the Pinch of Mustard-Seed
Compare: Dhp-a 8.13; Thīg-a 63
Kisā Gotamī’s child died, but she did not believe it, and went round trying to find a cure; someone sent her to the Buddha who asked her to bring mustard seeds from a house that has never seen death; she was unable to, of course, and realised death is pervasive; the Buddha then taught her with a verse and she became a Stream-enterer.
Keywords: Death, Insight
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“That person whose mind is attached,” this Dhamma teaching was given by the Teacher while he was in residence at Jetavana with reference to Kisā Gotamī.
The Story of Kisā Gotamī is contained in the Chapter about the Thousands, and is related in detail in the commentary on this verse:
Dhp 114. One might live for a hundred years
without seeing the deathless state,
but a life of one day’s better
for one seeing the deathless state. BG: See Dhp-a 8.13.
For at that time the Teacher said: “Kisā Gotamī, did you get a pinch of white mustard-seed?” – “Nay, venerable Sir, that did I not. In the entire village the dead are more in number than the living.”
Then said the Teacher: “Vainly did you imagine that you alone had lost a child. But all living beings are subject to an unchanging law, and it is this: The King of Death, like to a raging torrent, sweeps away into the sea of ruin all living beings; still are their longings unfulfilled.” So saying, he taught the Dhamma by pronouncing the following verse:
287. Taṁ puttapasusammattaṁ byāsattamanasaṁ naraṁ,
suttaṁ gāmaṁ mahogho va maccu ādāya gacchati.
That person whose mind is attached,
besotted by cattle and children,
is snatched away by death just as
a sleeping village by a flood.
At the end of the teaching Kisā Gotamī was established in the fruition of Stream-entry, AJ: later in the teaching recorded in Dhp-a 8.13 she attains Arahatship. and those who had assembled also had benefit from the Dhamma teaching.