PPT on the sermon at baneras with Gujarat flavour.
Answers
Answer:
1. When her son dies, Kisa Gotami goes from house to house. What does she ask
for? Does she get it? Why not?
Ans: When Kisa Gotami’s son dies, she goes from house to house, asking if she could
get some medicine that would cure her child. No, she does not get it because her child
is dead and no medicine could bring him back to life.
2. Kisa Gotami again goes from house to house after she speaks with the
Buddha. What does she ask for, the second time around? Does she get it? Why
not?
Ans: When she met the Buddha, he asked her to get a handful of mustard seeds from a
house where no one had lost a child, husband, parent or friend. She went from house to
house, but could get the mustard seeds because there was not a single house where no
one had died in the family.
3. What does Kisa Gotami understand the second time that she failed to
understand the first time? Was this what the Buddha wanted her to understand?
Ans: Kisa Gotami understood the second time that death is common to all and that she
was being selfish in her grief. There was no house where some beloved had not died.
Yes, this was what Buddha wanted her to understand.
4. Why do you think Kisa Gotami understood this only the second time? In what
way did the Buddha change her understanding?
Ans: Kisa Gotami understood that death is common to all and that she was being
selfish in her grief. She understood this only the second time because it was then that
she found that there was not a single house where some beloved had not died.
First time round, she was only thinking about her grief and was therefore, asking for a
medicine that would cure her son. When she met the Buddha, he asked her to get a
handful of mustard seeds from a house where no one had died. He did this purposely to
make her realise that there was not a single house where no beloved had died, and that
death is natural. When she went to all the houses for the second time, she felt dejected
that she could not gather the mustard seeds. Then, when she sat and thought about it,
she realised that the fate of men is such that they live and die. Death is common to all.
This was what the Buddha had intended her to understand.