Grief at the loss of a loved one is not a competitive sport,
but we frequently subscribe to popular perceptions that some losses are deeper
than others – a friend’s loss is deeper than losing a pet; a parent over a
friend; a spouse over a parent. And all of these losses pale compared to the
pain of the loss of a child.
Maybe that’s why the story of Kisa Gotami rings through the
centuries to bring us to understand grief and loss in the hard, but liberating
light of impermanence and the universality of suffering and death.
The First Noble Truth in the Buddha’s very first teaching
since his awakening spells this out clearly:
…the noble truth of
suffering—birth is suffering, old age is suffering, sickness is suffering,
death is suffering.
Suffering is a common bond that we all share. The word “suffering” in the Pali language of
the earliest Buddhist texts is dukka,
meaning the suffering that comes from being incapable of being satisfied. But when we lose someone we love—maybe a
child in particular—the meaning of our suffering comes right out of the
dictionary’s definition: the state of pain, distress, or hardship. It is nobody’s preferred state of mind or
being.
So it was with Kisa Gotami, a young woman who lived during
the Buddha’s lifetime, and who gave birth to a son. Her happiness was shattered when the infant
sickened and died. Her grief was so
overwhelming, she refused to believe her beautiful baby boy was dead. She carried his dead body with her, asking
her neighbors how to resuscitate him. The
sight of her horrified her neighbors, who saw her becoming deranged with her
grief. They advised her to accept her
son’s death and make his funeral arrangements.
But Kisa Gotami kept begging her baby boy to wake up.
An elder in the village finally took compassion on her
suffering saying, “We can’t help you—but there is a great teacher near by, a
Buddha. Perhaps he can bring your son
back to you.”
In great haste and excitement, Kisa Gotami went to find the
teacher, clutching her dead child. Who
of us would not do the same—seek out the second opinion, do whatever it took to
bring our beloved back to us again? Kisa Gotami used the words of desperate
hope when she found the Buddha and asked him to revive her child: I will
do anything to bring my son back.
The Buddha saw her desperation and probably her madness as
well, and said: “Find me a mustard
seed—from a home where no one has ever lost someone to death. Bring the seed back to me, and your son will
be restored to life.”
Kisa Gotami took her dead child and went to find mustard
seed from a home where there had been no death.
Mustard seed in the India of those times was as common as table salt is
in ours and even less expensive. Everyone
she met was willing to give her mustard seeds, but everyone had lost a
grandmother, a husband, an aunt, even a child, to death.
It took some time before Kisa Gotami’s wild hope turned to
the quiet realization: no one is spared
death; it is an inevitable and natural part of life, and pain and the suffering
of loss is just as natural a part of the survivors’ lives too.
Putting aside her grief, Kisa Gotami prepared her son for
burial and then returned to the Buddha to become his disciple.
In a poetic interpretation of this return meeting between
the Buddha and Kisa Gotami, the Buddha says:
Seeing one dead, know
for sure: ‘I shall never see him in this
existence’. And just as the fire of a
burning house is quenched, so does the contemplative wise person scatter grief’s
power… He who would seeks peace should pull out the arrow of lamentation,
useless longings, and the self-made pangs of grief. He who has removed this unwholesome arrow and
has calmed himself will obtain peace of mind.
And Kisa Gotami can now respond:
I’ve cut out the
arrow,
put down the burden,
done the task.
I, Kisa Gotami,
my heart
well-released,
have said this.
It is not one of those
“and they lived happily ever after” stories. It is not a miracle story of the dead returned
to life. The Buddha didn’t perform
miracles or tell happily ever after stories.
He assigned a practice, a job, a task.
In performing that practice or job, that task, what unfolded before you was
the clear vision of truth, life as it truly is, not life through the clouded
eyes of seeing what you wanted to see.
Death is inevitable; the sharp arrow of grief and loss
shoots straight through us who are left behind.
Our job must be to remove the second arrow, the suffering of denial,
wishful thinking, groundless hope. In
the middle of our lives, for all its sorrows and suffering, there is still a
way to free ourselves from our grief—when we see it as part of our life and see it in the lives of everyone around us as
well. We are not alone, not even in the terrible
grief of a terrible loss. We share that
with our fellow beings who, like Kisa Gotami, like her neighbors, have been on
the path before us.
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