眾經撰雜譬喻 2.30

2.30

Formerly, there was an elderly mother who had only an only son. He fell ill and died, and was taken to a cemetery where the corpse was laid out. Overcome with grief beyond endurance, she cried, "I had just one son to support me in my old age, yet he has abandoned me in death! What purpose is there in my living? I cannot go back; I must end my life together with him in the same place!" She neither ate nor drank for four or five days. Knowing this, the Buddha took five hundred bhikṣus and went to that cemetery. The elderly mother saw from afar the Buddha coming with magnificent spiritual radiance; as if waking from confusion and sobering from drunkenness, she stepped forward toward the Buddha, bowed, and stood to one side. The Buddha asked the elderly mother, "Why are you in the cemetery?" She said to the World-Honoured One, "I had only an only son who has abandoned me and died. My love for him is so deep that I wish to die together with him in the same place." The Buddha asked the elderly mother, "Do you wish to make your son live again?" The mother said, "Splendid!" She said, "I wish for it!" The Buddha said, "Seek incense and fire; I shall chant a blessing to bring him back to life." He told the elderly mother, "When seeking the fire, you must obtain fire from a household where no one has died." Thereupon, the elderly mother went out to fetch fire. Whenever she saw anyone, she would ask, "Have there ever been any deaths in your family?" They replied, "From our ancestors onwards, all have died." Everywhere she went and asked, the replies were all like this. Passing through several dozen households, she did not dare take any fire. She then returned to the Buddha and said to the World-Honoured One, "I went everywhere seeking fire, but there was no household where no one had died; thus I have returned empty-handed." The Buddha told the elderly mother, "Since the opening and creation of heaven and earth, there has been no life that does not come to an end. When people die, the lives of those who come after are also something to delight in. Why are you alone so bewildered as to seek to follow your son in death?" The mother's mind immediately understood, and she recognized the truth of anitya. Taking this occasion, the Buddha widely expounded the Dharma of the sūtras to her, and she immediately attained the fruit of srotaāpanna. Among the several thousand spectators in the cemetery, all gave rise to the aspiration for unsurpassed, true, and perfect enlightenment.