Lesson to be learned 昔練習で書いたオリジナルの創作

Buddha stopped off at a village and met a desperate woman whose son had died of a sickness some time before.

She loved him so much and couldn't forget the little six-year-old boy, so she had desperately been looking for a means to cure him from death and live with her again.

She approached Buddha as he ended his sermon among a crowd of villagers, and asked him how she could bring her son back from death. With an enigmatic smile, Buddha gave her an instruction:

"Go obtain a handful of a certain plant seed but from someone who has never lost any of his or her family members or relatives by death."

Believing in his words, full of hope, she set off visiting people to get the seed. After going around her village, she moved to a neighboring village one after another, asking all the people about the seed. She found some who had it but no one who didn't have an experience of death of their family or relatives. In the process of her exploration, she got to know many people with a lot of sorrow stories of the separation from their loved husbands, wives, sons, daughters, or parents.

After being exhausted of the search, she came to the conclusion that it would be impossible to achieve her task, yet she learned about something that she didn't know before, and realized that she didn't feel agony any longer.

With refreshed feelings and calmness, she recovered a gentle smile back on her face, and began to walk toward her village with not energetic but steady strides .

---------This story is based on a Buddhist anecdote, but may be very different from the original.