A poor woman once came to Buddha to ask him whether he could give her any medicine to restore her dead child to life. The holy man, touched by the great sorrow of the woman, told her that there was only one medicine which could revive her son. He bade her bring him a handful of mustard seed from a house where death had never entered.
The sorrowing mother went from door to door seeking the mustard seed, but every door she met with sad replies. One said, ``I have lost my husband,'' another said, ``Our youngest child died last year.'' She returned with a heavy heart to the teacher who told her tenderly that she must not think much of her own grief, since sorrow and death are common to all.
