The cure for death dhammapada

The Cure for Death
SOON AFTER GISA KOTAMI got married, she gave birth to
a son whom she loved dearly. Then, one day, when he was
just beginning to learn how to walk, he suddenly fell ill and
died. This left Gisa Kotami deeply grieved. Unable to accept
her only son’s death, she roamed the streets with him held
tightly in her arms, asking whomever she came across for
some medicine that could cure her son and bring him back
to life. Luckily she came upon a kindly man who realized
her plight and advised her to go and see the Buddha. “The
Buddha alone,” he told her, “has the antidote to death.”
When the Buddha saw Gisa Kotami, he realized that she
was too grief-stricken to listen to reason and so resorted to
some skillful means to help her. He told her that he could
indeed restore her son back to life if she could get him a
mustard seed. “However,” the Buddha warned, “the mus-
tard seed must not come from any household where death
has ever occurred. If you can bring one back to me, your
child will live again.”
Gisa Kotami felt great relief and was overjoyed at the
prospect of having her son once more playing at her side.
Full of hope, she hurriedly went from house to house, but
nowhere could she find a household in which no one had
ever died. At last it dawned on her that she was not alone
in her grief, for everyone else had suffered the loss of a loved
one at one time or another. When she realized that, she lost all attachment to the dead body of her son and understood
what the Buddha was trying to teach her: nothing born can
ever escape death.
Gisa Kotami then buried her son and went to tell the
Buddha that she could find no family where tears had never
been shed over a lost loved one. The Buddha said to her,
“You have now seen that it is not only you who have ever lost
a son, Gisa Kotami. Death comes to all beings, for fleeting
and impermanent is the nature of all component things.”
Gisa Kotami then became a nun and strove hard to even-
tually perceive the state of no death and no sorrow, which
is the deathless state of Nibbana.

Better it is to live one day comprehending
the Deathless than a hundred years without
ever comprehending the Deathless.
3 Verse 114