Once upon a time, in Northern India there was a woman in her forties, who wished to become a mother for a long time. It seemed that she was barren, but when the last ray of hope was about to vanish, unexpectedly she gave birth to a very beautiful baby girl.

At that time, she was the happiest woman in the world, but at the age of five years her little girl died suddenly.

She was desperate, and couldn’t accept that her beloved daughter had passed away. She cried and cried. One day, one of her neighbors advised her to go to Prince Gautama Buddha, who was a man able to perform miracles.

“ If you beseech that holy man, your daughter will come back to life!” said the neighbor.

The lady set out towards the place where Buddha lived and after two days’ walk she reached him.

Prince Gautama Buddha was sitting surrounded by many monks. Seeing her so badly upset, he felt pity.

“To perform the miracle,” said Prince Gautama to the lady, “ you need to bring me seven pumpkin seeds, but they must be taken from a house where nobody has died.”

The lady was happy and confident that she would easily get the seven pumpkin seeds, and Prince Siddhartha Gautama would perform the miracle to revive her child.

She knocked on the door of a house and asked: “Do you have pumpkin seeds?”

“Yes, of course we have a lot of pumpkin seeds,” answered a young lady on the threshold.

“Did someone die in this house?”

“Unfortunately, last year my father passed away,” she answered.

She kept going from house to house asking for pumpkin seeds, but she couldn’t find a house where nobody had died. Everyone had suffered the death of someone.

Meanwhile, the desperate lady returned to reason, and finally realized that life and death are two sides of the same coin, no one can escape the latter.

What is the moral of the story?

You are not the only one who struggles in life; whenever you feel a pain which seems unbearable, look at the others and you will see your trouble fade away.

Ettore Grillo, author of these books:
– A Hidden Sicilian History
– The Vibrations of Words
– Travels of the Mind
http://www.amazon.com/author/ettoregrillo