|| An Aesops Fable ||
Once upon a time, a wealthy couple lost their only son, a little boy. The mother could not accept their fate and asked many monks and ascetics to give a medicine to cure her son. Finally one wise old monk told her, “My child, get me some mustard seeds. But you must get them from a house where no son, or husband, or parent, or slave has died”.
The mother thought that mustard seeds were common enough. So she went to a house and asked for mustard seeds but when she mentioned the other condition, she found that there was no house that had seen death. Every household had lost someone at some point of time: a child, a parent, a relative or a househelp. The living were few but the dead were many.
The realization gradually came to her. She grieved over her son, but resolved to let go. She finally became a monk herself and served in the temple of the wise old master.
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