Once there was a skinny young girl name Goutami. She had to put up with the insulting nick-name ‘Kisa-Goutami’, or ‘Skinny Goutami’. On top of that, when she got married her husband used to treat her badly. It was only when she bore a beautiful child people started to treat her with respect at last.
Unfortunately, just when her little boy was old enough to begin to run about and play, he became ill and died. At this, Goutami became almost crazy with sorrow, and refused to believe that he was dead. So she took the dead baby from house to house, asking for medicine to cure her child.
One of her wise neighbours, advised her go to the Buddha. Goutami went to Buddha, and said, ‘Please, Oh Wise One, give me some medicine for my poor sick child.’ The Buddha said to her, ‘Go back to the town, knock on all the doors and wherever you find a household where no-one has died, ask them to give you a little mustard seed. I will be able to make some medicine for your child.’
So Goutami went into the town, knocked on the door of the first house and said, ‘If no-one has died in your family, please give me some mustard seed from your house.’ The woman of the house looked at her sadly and said, ‘Certainly I can give you some mustard seed, but we have had many, many deaths in our family’.
At every house where she knocked at the door, the result was same. They told her that they also were in sorrow for the death of a dearly loved relative – a mother, or a father, or an uncle, or an aunt, or a son, or a daughter. However, something important had happened. As a result of sharing her sorrow with so many other people who also had lost a loved one, she found that her own sorrow was now reduced.
No longer did Goutami feel agonized. And from that time onward, Goutami became one of the wisest and most respected followers of the Buddha.
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