Once, Buddha entered a village along with his disciples. A lady approached him and invited him to have lunch in her house. Buddha blessed her and accepted her invitation. Seeing this, many villagers, including the village headman, warned Buddha, saying, 'O Buddha, You are one of wisdom and have renounced everything. The lady, a courtesan-dancer, is not a woman of good character. It is not proper for you to have food in her house.

Buddha smiled and asked the village headman to come forward. Buddha, holding firmly the right hand of the headman, asked him to clap. The headman said it was not possible for him to clap since one of his hands was in Buddha's hold.

Buddha said, "True. It is possible to clap only when two hands come together. This lady cannot turn bad by herself unless there are men of bad character in the village. The men of this village are the root cause of her bad character."

On another occassion, when a distraught woman came to him carrying the corpse of her son, asking him to give it life, the Buddha said that he could do so only if she had found the necessary medication.

Buddha asked her to find a mustard seed from any house where none have died. She immediately started running from house to house but to her dismay, everyone told her that they had experienced at least one death in their family. Finally it dawned on her that death is inevitable! This is how Buddha taught self-realization.

A young widower, who loved his five year old son very much, was away on business when bandits came who burned down the whole village and took his son away. When the man returned, he saw the ruins and panicked. He mistook the burnt corpse of an infant to be his son and cried uncontrollably. He organised a cremation ceremony, collected the ashes and put them in a beautiful little bag which he always kept with him.

Soon afterwards, his real son escaped from the bandits and found his way home. He arrived at his father's new cottage at midnight and knocked at the door. The father, still grieving asked: "Who is it?" The child answered, it is me papa, open the door!" But in his agitated state of mind, convinced his son was dead, the father thought that some young boy was making fun of him. He shouted: "Go away" and continued to cry. After some time, the child left.

Father and son never saw each other again.

After this story, the Buddha said: "Sometime, somewhere, you take something to be the truth. If you cling to it so much, even when the truth comes in person and knocks on your door, you will not open it."