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522 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
holder died, and the loss made the father neglect his business and his meals.
VI
He was always going to the charnel ground and wailing aloud saying, “Where are you, my son, where are you ? ”
The bereaved father came to the Blessed Lord and after due salutations sat on one side.
Seeing that his mind was absolutely vacant showing no interest in anything, not telling the purpose for which he had come, the Blessed Lord, noticing his condition, said “You are not yourself; your mind is all awry.”
“How could my mind not be awry, sir, when I have lost my darling and only son?”
6.“ Yes, householder; our dear ones bring sorrow and lamentation, pain, suffering and tribulation ?”
7.“Who sir can entertain such a view ?”, said the angry householder, “Nay, our dear ones are a joy and happiness to us.”
And with these words the householder, rejecting the Lord’s pronouncement, indignantly got up and departed.
Hard by, there were a number of gamblers having a game with dice; and to them came the householder with his story of how he had related his sorrows to the recluse Gotama, how he had been received and how he had indignantly departed.
You were quite right, said the gamblers, for our dear ones are a source of joy and happiness to us. So the householder felt he had got the gamblers on his side.
Now all this, in due course, penetrated to the private apartments of the palace where the king told Queen Mallika that her recluse Gotama had stated that dear ones bring sorrow and lamentation, pain, suffering and tribulation.
“Well, sir, if the Lord said so, so it is.”
“Just as a pupil accepts all his master tells him, saying, ‘So it is, sir; so it is’—just in the same way Mallika, you accept all the recluse Gotama says with