I am here to give my review on the story THE SERMON OF BENARES. Something about me is that I am not very fond of reading books and stories. This story was also something I wasn't willing to read, however this was a chapter in my school which was taught last week. And I have to agree that it's been a long time since I actually read a story that fascinated me.
Before sharing a short summary of this story, if you are unaware then let me make it easy for you, sermon basically means a person who talks about spiritual things which gives out some important life learnings. And Benares is a city in Uttar Pradesh, India. A part of my family members are from Benares. Last year, I visited Benares and from the experience I can say that it is probably one of the most spiritual places in India. People there still follow the old traditional culture and it honestly feels like you go back in time when you look at your surroundings in Benares. Now coming to the summary of the story...
The story starts by giving an introduction about Gautama Buddha who is also the main lead of the story. It talks about how Gautama Buddha, a rich and wealthy prince, leaves all his luxurious of life and lives a life of sacrifice and service.
The story is about a woman named Kisa Gotami who is filled with grief after the death of her only son. She is not able to accept this pain and faith of her son, so she goes house to house asking for a medicine to cure him. The people are not able to help her as they know that her son is no more. At this moment, Kisa meets a man who suggests her to go meet The Buddha, for he is the only one who might be able to cure her son. When she meets The buddha, he gives her a task and tells her to bring mustard seeds from a house that has not experienced the death of their loved ones. If she is able to do so, then her son can be brought back to life. Kisa Gotami fails to do so, as she receives mustard seeds but death has taken in place in every other house, however during this process Kisa understands how she was being selfish in her grief. Here The Buddha proves how intelligently he teaches an important lesson to a person by giving them the experience.
The Buddha then enlightens Kisa and the readers about life and death. He talks about something which very much enlightened me as well. He says that death is common to all and that death is a part of life. One should learn to accept the miseries and sorrows of life. life and death goes hand in hand. We humans happily accept life, similarly we should learn to accept death as well, for there is no life without death. life is not immortal and one should understand that one day your loved ones will leave the world and some day you will too.
One should be able to accept the harsh reality of life, the reality that one day you will loose someone or something and that nothing in this world is permanent.
But it is about understanding the nature of loss and learning how to cope up with that loss because all that is left is YOU and your life continues to move on.