I have forsaken him all these
years, yet now that my husband and his children are dead, my father will
take me back again. Surely he will have pity on me, for I am much to be
pitied.'

So she went on, and at length, after many days, she came to the gates of
the great city where her father lived.

At the entering of the gates she met a large company of people,
mourners, returning from a funeral, and she spoke to them and asked
them:

'Who is it that you have been burying to-day so grandly with so many
mourners?'

And the people answered her, and told her who it was. And when she
heard, she fell down upon the road as one dead: for it was her father
and mother who had died yesterday, and it was their funeral train that
she saw. They were all dead now, husband and sons and father and mother;
in all the world she was quite alone.

So she went mad, for her trouble was more than she could bear. She threw
off all her clothes, and let down her long hair and wrapped it about her
naked body, and walked about raving.

At last she came to where the Buddha was teaching, seated under a
fig-tree. She came up to the Buddha, and told him of her losses, and how
she had no one left; and she demanded of the Buddha that he should
restore to her those that she had lost. And the Buddha had great
compassion upon her, and tried to console her.

'All die,' he said; 'it comes to everyone, king and peasant, animal and
man. Only through many deaths can we obtain the Great Peace. All this
sorrow,' he said, 'is of the earth. All this is passion which we must
get rid of, and forget before we reach heaven. Be comforted, my
daughter, and turn to the holy life. All suffer as you do. It is part of
our very existence here, sorrow and trouble without any end.'

But she would not be comforted, but demanded her dead of the Buddha.
Then, because he saw it was no use talking to her, that her ears were
deaf with grief, and her eyes blinded with tears, he said to her that he
would restore to her those who were dead.

'You must go,' he said, 'my daughter, and get some mustard-seed, a pinch
of mustard-seed, and I can bring back their lives. Only you must get
this seed from the garden of him near whom death has never come. Get
this, and all will be well.'

So the woman went forth with a light heart. It was so simple, only a
pinch of mustard-seed, and mustard grew in every garden. She would get
the seed and be back very quickly, and then the Lord Buddha w