Life is temporary

I was on my melancholic mood this past few days. Having nothing to do but wait for time to pass by and downed on me. I came upon this fact of life.

The Mustard Seed

A young woman, having lost her first born, was so beset with grief that she wandered through the streets pleading for some magic medicine to restore life to her child she left in the house of her parents watching over her dead child.

Some turn away from her in pity; some mocked her and called her mad; some just ignored her; none could find words to console her. She seems to be in complete deep sorrow. But a wise man, noting her despair, said, "There is only one in all the world who can perform this miracle. He is the Perfect One and resides at the top of the mountain. Go to him and ask."

The young woman immediately went up to the mountain and stood before the Perfect One and beseeched, "Oh Buddha, give life back to my child who lays lifeless in the house of my parents."

"Go down into the city, from house to house, and bring to me a mustard seed from a house which no one has ever died."

The young woman's spirit was high as she hastened down the mountain and into the city. At the first house, she said; "The Buddha bids me to ask a mustard seed from a house which has never known death."

"Many have died here," they said.

So she went to the next house and asked again.

"It is impossible to count the number who have died here," they replied.

She went to the third house and a fourth and a fifth, on and on through the city, and could not find a single house which death had not at some time visited.

So the young woman returned to the top of the mountain.

"Have you brought the mustard?" the Buddha asked.

"No," she said, "nor do I seek it anymore. My grief had made me blind. I thought that only I had suffered at the hands of death."

"Then why did you return?" the Perfect One inquired.

"To ask you to teach me the truth," she said.

And this is what the Buddha told her:

In all the world of man
This alone is the Law:
ALL THINGS ARE TEMPORARY.

Moral Lesson:
Death should not be feared. It is as natural to die as to be born.

True that nobody wants to depart and leave behind grieving love ones, but life as other things are only temporary and if we cant find peace here on earth then death is a welcome relief.