“ The Dalai Lama mentioned the famous buddhist story of the woman who had lost her child and was inconsolable in her grief, carrying her dead child throughout the land, begging for someone to help heal her child. When she came to the Buddha, she begged him to help her. He told her he could help her if she would collect mustard seeds for the medicine. She eagerly agreed, but then the Buddha explained that the mustard seeds needed to come from a house that had not been touched by death. When the woman visited each house in search of the mustard seeds that might heal her son, she discovered that there was no house that had not suffered the loss of a parent, or a spouse, or a child. Seeing that her suffering was not unique, she was able to bury her child in the forest and release her grief.”
- by Douglas Abrams from The Book of Joy with the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu