The Sermon at Benares – Class 10 English Chapter 8 Notes & NCERT PDF

Overview

This chapter brings together two very different reflections on life. "The Sermon at Benares" tells how the Buddha helped a grieving mother, Kisa Gotami, understand that death is common to all (source: Betty Renshaw, Values and Voices: A College Reader, 1975). "For Anne Gregory" by W. B. Yeats is a playful conversation asking whether anyone can be loved "for yourself alone".

The Sermon at Benares (prose)

The Buddha's life (introduction). Gautama Buddha (563 B.C. – 483 B.C.) was born Prince Siddhartha Gautama in northern India. At twelve he was sent away to study the Hindu sacred scriptures; four years later he returned, married a princess, and they had a son. At about twenty-five, while out hunting, he saw a sick man, an aged man, a funeral procession and a monk begging for alms. Deeply moved, he went out to seek enlightenment. After wandering for seven years, he sat under a peepal tree; enlightened after seven days, he renamed it the Bodhi Tree (Tree of Wisdom) and became the Buddha — "the Awakened or the Enlightened". He preached his first sermon at Benares, "most holy of the dipping places on the River Ganges".

Kisa Gotami's grief. Kisa Gotami's only son died. Carrying the dead child, she begged her neighbours for medicine; they said she had lost her senses. A man sent her to Sakyamuni, the Buddha.

The mustard-seed test. The Buddha asked for a handful of mustard-seed — but it had to come "from a house where no one has lost a child, husband, parent or friend." People gladly offered seed, but every family had lost someone: "Alas! the living are few, but the dead are many." There was no house without a death.

Her realisation. Weary, she sat by the wayside watching the city lights "flicker up and … be extinguished again", and saw that human lives are the same. She thought: "How selfish am I in my grief! Death is common to all; yet in this valley of desolation there is a path that leads him to immortality who has surrendered all selfishness."

The sermon. The Buddha taught:

"The life of mortals in this world is troubled and brief and combined with pain."

How the Buddha taught: he did not argue; he let her discover the truth through experience — a practical lesson rather than a lecture.

Themes: the universality of death; grief and selfishness; wisdom through experience; peace through acceptance.

For Anne Gregory (poem) — W. B. Yeats

A conversation between a young man and a young woman (Anne Gregory):

Imagery: "honey-coloured ramparts" — her golden hair, falling like the high walls of a fort around her ears.

Refrain: "for yourself alone / And not your yellow hair" ends every stanza.

Message: people are drawn by outer beauty; unconditional love for the inner self is rare — perhaps only divine.

About the poet: William Butler Yeats (1865–1939), Irish nationalist, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.

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