On a certain day, a woman who was the mother of three young boys lost her husband and was very grief stricken. Naturally, after this she hung on to the three children as her life. But the eldest boy also died after a year and soon after, the second one also passed away. Now she clung on to her only child like dear life but this boy also died soon. Unable to bear this, she took the little boy’s body and went to Gautama the Buddha and said, ‘You and all your spirituality. Whatever you are talking doesn’t mean anything unless you bring this boy to life. My husband died, I somehow bore that. My first boy died and then the second one too, I still held on. Now the last one is also gone. If you are real, prove it now by bringing this boy to life.’
Gautama looked at the woman and knew that in this state of inflated emotion, whatever he says will not get across. So Gautama said, ‘I will bring your boy back to life. Go and get me a few sesame seeds from a house that has never known death.’ The woman carrying the boy’s body went from house to house, looking for a home that had never known death. After going through the entire town, she realised there wasn’t a single home like this. Then she stopped, did what she had to do with the body and came and sat in front of Gautama. She remained with him right through her life.
When a loved one dies, it is not something that anybody wants to see. But if such a thing did happen, how does one go beyond this grief?
When we talk about going beyond something, it does not mean forgetting about it. If your child dies, you just cannot tell yourself ‘It is okay, it is all natural’. Somebody who meant a lot to you is gone, it is true; but the fact of life is such – that which slips beyond the realm of what you call as life right now, is not yours anymore. What has happened is a reality. It is not with any insensitivity that I am saying this, but it is time to accept it the way it is. The process of what we are looking at as acceptance is just this – life happens like a river. A river always flows between two banks. You cannot say, ‘I do not like the left bank, it should disappear.’ If the right bank has to be there, the left bank also has to be there. Can there be light without darkness or man without woman? Can there be life without death? Would you even have a perspective of what life is, if there was no death? Life is what it is only because death is.
So it is time to accept it and look at what you can do with the life that is here. If somebody very dear to you passed away, do not make yourself into a wreck. There is so much life around you which needs love and care and if you have a need to find expression to this love and care in you, please do that. If you do not, your grief will remain bottled up and will torture you for the rest of your life. If you have lost one son, take up ten kids as your own and see that you find full expression to your love and parenthood. Your son can become a foundation to make your life so beautiful. You have to take that step. Otherwise you will simply go on with something that you cannot change. What is happening within us, it doesn’t matter for what reason it is happening but still it is being created by us. If we are willing, we can change that too. And as long as you are alive, it is important that you see how to contribute to the living; because there is nothing that you can do about the dead.
(Sadhguru is a Yogi, mystic, visionary and a New York Times bestselling author. He is also the founder of Conscious Planet – Save Soil)
