Born as Prince Siddhartha Gautama (563 B.C. – 483 B.C.) in northern India, he was shielded from the world's sufferings. At twelve, he was sent for schooling in Hindu sacred scriptures, returning four years later to marry a princess. They lived in royal comfort for ten years and had a son.
At age twenty-five, while out hunting, the Prince chanced upon four sights that changed his life: a sick man, an aged man, a funeral procession, and a monk begging for alms. Deeply moved by these sights of suffering, he renounced his royal life to seek enlightenment concerning the world's sorrows.
He wandered for seven years and finally sat under a peepal tree, vowing to stay until he found truth. After seven days, he attained enlightenment and renamed the tree the Bodhi Tree (Tree of Wisdom). He became known as the Buddha (the Awakened or the Enlightened) and preached his first sermon at Benares, a holy city on the River Ganges.
Kisa Gotami's only son died. In her extreme grief, she carried the dead child to her neighbors, begging for medicine to bring him back to life. The neighbors pitied her but realized she had lost her senses, as the boy was dead.
A man directed her to the Buddha. She went to him crying, "Lord and Master, give me the medicine that will cure my boy." The Buddha agreed, asking for a handful of mustard seed, but with one condition: it must be procured from a house where no one has lost a child, husband, parent, or friend.
Kisa Gotami went from house to house. People were willing to give her mustard seeds, but whenever she asked if anyone had died in their family, they replied, "Alas! the living are few, but the dead are many." Unable to find a single household untouched by death, she sat weary by the wayside, watching the city lights flicker and extinguish. She realized that death is common to all, and she had been selfish in her grief.
The Buddha taught that the life of mortals in this world is troubled, brief, and combined with pain. There is no way to avoid death. He used two powerful analogies:
The Buddha explained that neither weeping nor grieving can bring peace of mind; instead, it increases pain and damages the body. The dead cannot be saved by lamentation. To obtain peace of mind, one must draw out the arrow of lamentation, complaint, and grief, and become composed to overcome all sorrow.
Grief is a natural response to loss, characterized by various emotions:
The author shares his personal experience of losing his wife and son. He emphasizes that there is no "right" or systematic way to grieve, and that focusing on what survivors can do for one another is the ultimate source of consolation.
Stanza 1:
"Never shall a young man,
Thrown into despair
By those great honey-coloured
Ramparts at your ear,
Love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair."
Stanza 2:
"But I can get a hair-dye
And set such colour there,
Brown, or black, or carrot,
That young men in despair
May love me for myself alone
And not my yellow hair."
Stanza 3:
"I heard an old religious man
But yesternight declare
That he had found a text to prove
That only God, my dear,
Could love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair."