Kisa Gotami

Kisagotami before Buddha

Part of a series on
Buddhism
History Timeline Gautama Buddha Pre-sectarian Buddhism Councils Silk Road transmission of Buddhism Decline in the Indian subcontinent Later Buddhists Buddhist modernism
Dharma Concepts Four Noble Truths Noble Eightfold Path Dharma wheel Five Aggregates Impermanence Suffering Not-self Dependent Origination Middle Way Emptiness Morality Karma Rebirth Saṃsāra Cosmology
Buddhist texts Buddhavacana Early Buddhist Texts Tripiṭaka Mahayana Sutras Pāli Canon Tibetan canon Chinese canon
Practices Three Jewels Buddhist Paths to liberation Five precepts Perfections Meditation Philosophical reasoning Devotional practices Merit making Recollections Mindfulness Wisdom Sublime abidings Aids to Enlightenment Monasticism Lay life Buddhist chant Pilgrimage Vegetarianism
Nirvāṇa Awakening Four Stages Arhat Pratyekabuddha Bodhisattva Buddha
Traditions Theravāda Pāli Mahāyāna Hinayana Chinese Vajrayāna Tibetan Navayana Newar
Buddhism by country Bhutan Cambodia China India Japan Korea Laos Mongolia Myanmar Russia Sri Lanka Taiwan Thailand Tibet Vietnam
Outline  Religion portal
v t

Kisa Gotami was the wife of a wealthy man of Savatthi. Her story is one of the more famous ones in Buddhism. After losing her only child, Kisa Gotami became desperate and asked if anyone could help her. Her sorrow was so great that many thought she had lost her mind. An old man told her to see the Buddha. The Buddha told her that he could bring the child back to life if she could find white mustard seeds from a family where no one had died. She desperately went from house to house, but to her disappointment, she could not find a house that had not suffered the death of a family member. Finally the realization struck her that there is no house free from mortality. She returned to the Buddha, who comforted her and preached to her the truth. She was awakened and entered the first stage of enlightenment. Eventually, she became an Arahat.

The following Dhammapada verse^[1] (in Pali and English) is associated with her story:

In the "Gotami Sutta" (SN 5.3), Bhikkhuni Kisa Gotami declares:

I've gotten past the killing of [my] sons,

have made that the end

to [my search for] men.

I don't grieve,

I don't weep....

It's everywhere destroyed — delight.

The mass of darkness is shattered.

Having defeated the army of death,

free of fermentations I dwell.^[2]

Happy indeed is the mother Happy indeed is the father Happy indeed is the wife Who is a lord so glorious

The story is the source of the popular aphorism: "The living are few, but the dead are many".

A literary tradition has evolved round the story of Kisa Gotami, much of it in oral form and in local plays in much of Asia. The Therigatha (or "Verses of the Elder Nuns") in the Pali Canon recounts a version of the story. A number of popular similar alternative versions also exist.^[3]

In popular culture[]

The story of Kisa Gotami is recited by Australian musician Nick Cave in the song "Hollywood" by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds from their seventeenth studio album, Ghosteen (2019).^[4]

The story is played out in the kids television series Bluey “Bumpy and the Wise Old Wolf Hound” Season 1 Episode 31.

Notes[]

Bibliography[]

• Buddharakkhita, Acharya (1998). Sahassavagga: The Thousands (Dhp VIII). Available on-line at http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/dhp/dhp.08.budd.html.
• Thanissaro Bhikkhu (trans.) (1998). Gotami Sutta: Sister Gotami (SN 5.3). Available on-line at http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn05/sn05.003.than.html.
• C. Rhys Davids and K. Norman: Poems of Early Buddhist Nuns, Pali Text Society, pp. 88–9. Retaken at: https://web.archive.org/web/20110514084000/http://mindfulnessmethod.wordpress.com/articles/kisa-gotami/
• Wendy Garling (2016), Stars at Dawn: Forgotten Stories of Women in the Buddha's Life, Shambhala Publications, pp. 95–106.

External links[]

• https://web.archive.org/web/20060510165611/http://www.goldenlandpages.com/hotspots/buddhism/43.htm