NCERT · Class 10 · English · First Flight: The Sermon at BenaresWhat task did Gautama Buddha assign to Kisa Gotami, and what condition was attached to it?

Gautama Buddha listened compassionately to Kisa Gotami's request to cure her dead child. Instead of directly giving her a theoretical lecture on death, he asked her to bring a handful of mustard seeds from a local household. However, Buddha attached a crucial condition to this task: the mustard seeds must come from a home where no one had ever lost a child, husband, parent, or friend to death. Kisa Gotami went from house to house with renewed hope of finding such mustard seeds to revive her son. However, everywhere she went, she discovered that death had touched every single family, and no home was free from the pain of bereavement.