Even if it is true that Jesus walked on water, what is the point of it when boats are available? It is simply stupid. What is divine in it? Even if he had managed to raise Lazarus from the dead…then nothing more is heard about Lazarus, only that story is there. What happened to Lazarus? He must have lived in misery and poverty, and would have died in sickness, disease, old age. What is the point of your service?

A similar case will help you to understand.

A woman’s husband died. She was young, had only one child. She wanted to commit sati, she wanted to jump in the funeral pyre with her husband, but this small child prevented her. She had to live for this small child.

But then the small child died; now it was too much. She went almost insane, asking people, “Is there any physician anywhere who can make my child alive again? I was living only for him, now my whole life is simply dark.”

In India you cannot marry again, and particularly in those days it was absolutely impossible. A woman cannot marry again. Man’s possessiveness is such that “Even if I die…you suffer, but you should not marry anyone.” Such jealousy – and this is called the “Indian heritage” by Mr. Rajiv Gandhi.

It happened that Buddha was coming to the town, so people said, “We don’t know any physician, but Buddha is coming. That is a great chance. You take the child to Buddha, and tell him that you were living for this child, and the child has died, `and you are such a great enlightened person, call him back to life! Have mercy on me!’”

So she went to Buddha. She put the dead body of the child at Buddha’s feet, and she said, “Call him back to life. You know all the secrets of life, you have attained to the ultimate peak of existence. Can’t you do a small miracle for a poor woman?”

Buddha said, “I will do it, but there is a condition.”

She said, “I will fulfill any condition.”

Buddha said, “Settled. The condition is: you go around the town and, from a house where nobody has ever died, bring a few mustard seeds.” That village was cultivating mustard seeds, so Buddha told her, “Just go around…”

The woman could not understand the strategy. She went to one house, and they said, “A few mustard seeds? We can bring a few bullock carts full of mustard seeds if Buddha can bring your son back to life. But our mustard seeds will not be of any help, because not one, but thousands have died in our family. Since eternity we have been here. We have seen our great-grandfather dying, we have seen our great-grandmother dying, we have seen our grandfather dying, grandmother dying. We have seen so many deaths in our family. These mustard seeds are useless. Buddha’s condition is, ‘from a house where nobody has ever died.’”

It was a small village, and she went to every house. Everybody was ready: “How many seeds do you want?” But the condition was impossible because “so many people have died in our family.”