A woman's husband died. She was young, had only one child. She wanted to commit sati, she wanted to jump in the funeral pyre with her husband, but this small child prevented her. She had to live for this small child.
But then the small child died; now it was too much. She went almost insane, asking people, "Is there any physician anywhere who can make my child alive again? I was living only for him, now my whole life is simply dark."
It happened that Buddha was coming to the town, so people said, "We don't know any physician, but Buddha is coming. That is a great chance. You take the child to Buddha, and tell him that you were living for this child, and the child has died, `and you are such a great enlightened person, call him back to life! Have mercy on me!'"
So she went to Buddha. She put the dead body of the child at Buddha's feet, and she said, "Call him back to life. You know all the secrets of life, you have attained to the ultimate peak of existence. Can't you do a small miracle for a poor woman?"
Buddha said, "I will do it, but there is a condition."
She said, "I will fulfill any condition."
Buddha said, "Settled. The condition is: you go around the town and, from a house where nobody has ever died, bring a few mustard seeds." That village was cultivating mustard seeds, so Buddha told her, "Just go around ..."
The woman could not understand the strategy. She went to one house, and they said, "A few mustard seeds? We can bring a few bullock carts full of mustard seeds if Buddha can bring your son back to life. But our mustard seeds will not be of any help, because not one, but thousands have died in our family. Since eternity we have been here. We have seen our great-grandfather dying, we have seen our great-grandmother dying, we have seen our grandfather dying, grandmother dying. We have seen so many deaths in our family. These mustard seeds are useless. Buddha's condition is, `from a house where nobody has ever died.'"
It was a small village, and she went to every house. Everybody was ready: "How many seeds do you want?" But the condition was impossible because "so many people have died in our family."
By the evening she became aware of the fact, and of the strategy of Gautam Buddha. She understood that whoever is born is going to die, "so what is the point of getting the child back again? He will die again. It is better for you yourself to seek the eternal, which is never born and never dies."
By the evening she came back empty-handed. Buddha asked, "Where are the mustard seeds?"
She laughed. In the morning she had come crying; now she laughed, and she said, "You tricked me! Everybody who is born is going to die. There is no family, not in this village, nor in the whole world, where nobody has died. So I don't want my son to be brought again back to life -- what is the point? After a few days, or a few months, or a few years, he will have to die again. And all these years he will live in misery, in all kinds of anguish and anxiety. Your compassion is great that you did not bring him back to life! "Forget about the child. Initiate me into the art of meditation, so that I can go into the land, the space of immortality, where birth and death have never happened."
Buddha said, "You are a very intelligent woman. You understood the point."
I call Buddha's strategy a miracle. Everybody is going to die, there is no point ... One has to get out of birth and death.
Buddha initiated the woman, and she became one of the enlightened ones among Buddha's disciples. Her urgency was such ... she knew that "My husband has died, my child has died, and now it is my number. Any moment and I will be a victim of death, so there is not much time. I don't know at what moment death is coming, so I have to be totally involved in the search, in what Buddha is telling me to do: `Go inwards. Go to the very center of your being, and you will be beyond birth and death.'"
