Chapter 8 Solutions — The Sermon at Benares

When her only son dies, Kisa Gotami is so overcome with grief that she cannot accept his death. She carries the dead child from house to house among her neighbours and asks them for medicine to cure (bring back to life) her boy.

She does not get any medicine. The people cannot help her because there is no medicine that can cure death — the child is already dead. Some even think she has lost her senses, saying, “She has lost her senses. The boy is dead.”

The old-fashioned expressions can be rephrased in current English as follows:

• “give thee medicine for thy child” — give you medicine for your child.

• “Pray tell me” — Please tell me.

• “Kisa repaired to the Buddha” — Kisa went to the Buddha.

• “there was no house but someone had died in it” — there was no house in which someone had not died.

• “kinsmen” — relatives / relations.

• “Mark!” — Note this! / Listen carefully!

By “great honey-coloured Ramparts at your ear” the young man means the young woman's beautiful golden-yellow hair, which falls thick around her ears like the high, protective walls (ramparts) of a castle. ‘Honey-coloured’ describes its warm golden shade.

He says that young men are “thrown into despair” by this hair because they are so captivated by its beauty that they fall in love with her outward appearance — her yellow hair — rather than with her true self. Their despair comes from being unable to love her “for herself alone.”